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THE BIBLE 


AND 


\ 

MODERN THOUGHT. 


BY 


„ 




O’ 


REV. T. R. BIRKS, M. A., 


I I 


RECTOR OF KELSHALL, HERTS. 



o- 



« 


CINCINNATI: 

PUBLISHED BY POE & HITCHCOCK, 

CORNER OF MAIN AND EIGHTH STREETS. 

- * 

R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER. 

1864. 


/ 














* 

























\ 
















✓ 


PEE FAC E. 


The present volume was written last Spring, in com¬ 
pliance with a request from the Committee of the Tract 
Society, in order to supply some antidote, in a popular 
form, tq that dangerous school of thought, which denies 
the miracles of the Bible, explains away its prophecies, 
and sets aside its Divine authority. Various circum¬ 
stances have occasioned some unexpected delay in its 
publication. Though suggested by the appearance of 
the Essays and Reviews, which have gained so wide a 
notoriety, it is not, of course, a direct and formal reply 
to them. It is designed for the use of thoughtful Chris¬ 
tians, or serious inquirers, who may have been per¬ 
plexed by modern speculations, and not for scholars 
and learned divines. My aim has been to treat the 
subject of the Christian evidences and the authority of 
the Bible in a simple, clear, and solid style of argu¬ 
ment, logically connected and continuous; and to deal 
with recent objections only so far as they lie directly 
in the way, and, like the lions in the allegory, block 
up the road of the Christian pilgrim to the palace of 

heavenly truth. At the same time, the fourth chapter, 

3 



4 


PREFACE. 


on the Reasonableness of Miracles; the eighth, on the 
Prophecies of the Old Testament; the twelfth and 
thirteenth, on the Interpretation of "Scripture, and on 
its Alleged Discrepancies; the fourteenth and fifteenth, 
on Modern Science; and the sixteenth, on the Bible 
and Natural Conscience, contain a full discussion of 
the principles advanced in the Third, the Second, the 
Seventh, the Fifth, and the First Essays. But my 
desire has been not so much to detect and expose error 
as to unfold the truth, and guide the minds of sincere 
inquirers into a well-grounded faith in the truth, wis¬ 
dom, harmony, and Divine authority of the Gospel, and 
of the written Word of God. May it please the Holy 
Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, to use it, however 
humble in itself, for a help to the faith of the people 
of Christ in these latter days! 

Kelshall Rectory, Oct. 10, 1861. 


EDITOR’S PREFACE. 


Mr. Birks has evidently well studied the skepticism 
of his own day and country; and in the following 
work has ably discussed the questions which have come 
before him. Modern infidelity is of course charac¬ 
terized by the spirit of the age in which we live. 
It is not coarse, daring, open, blasphemous; it does 
not attack by ridicule, scurrility, or misrepresentation. 
The ribaldry of Voltaire and Paine would offend and 
disgust our age, and their works are no longer read. 
The infidelity of our day is refined, respectful, subtile, 
analytical; it wears the appearance of candor and sin¬ 
cerity; the writer seems to be ingenuously searching 
after truth; he claims to be “ an honest skeptic.” He 
does not level his heavy artillery against' the outer 
intrenchments; these have so long and so effectually 
hurled back his attacks that their invulnerability seems 
to be conceded. With guns of much longer range, 
and with much more accurate aim, he attacks the 
citadel itself, and hopes to find some weakness in its 
inner works. 

Laying aside the figure, infidelity no longer contends 
against the historical evidences of the Bible; it no 



6 


editor’s preface. 


longer charges the sacred writers with imposture, dis¬ 
honesty, and collusion; it accepts the antiquity, the 
genuineness, and almost the authenticity of the Scrip¬ 
tures. It concedes to the Bible a high degree of 
historical value and antiquarian interest; it extols its 
poetical beauties; it praises its lofty aim and pure 
morality; it even recognizes in the sacred penmen 
deep religious feeling; yet can not acknowledge their 
Divine inspiration, nor accept their teachings as the 
only and infallible messages of truth. In brief, the 
Bible is to the modern infidel a most excellent book 
in every respect—literary, historical, moral, and re¬ 
ligious—but is not a revelation from God. 

To meet these new and subtile attacks we need new 
champions. The attack comes from a new quarter; it 
must be met on new ground. It shows its true char¬ 
acter best in Great Britain; in England, therefore, we 
expect to find its ablest opponents. Our author ranks 
in this class. He sees clearly, understands his work 
well, and writes forcibly. He does not evade the real 
points at issue, but enters fully and fairly into the 
subtile and delicate questions which lie back of all 
questions of mere historical credibility, and, conceding 
to a considerable extent the honesty of modern in¬ 
quiry, he candidly meets and discusses the real diffi¬ 
culties which the skeptic presents. We bespeak for 
this work a cordial reception in this country. 

I. W. Wiley. 

Cincinnati, July, 1864. - 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

Introduction. 13 

Infidelity defined, 13; its changing forms, 13;/covert infidelity, 14; 
its praise of the Bible, 14, 15; need of spiritual discernment, 17; 
questions to be answered, 18, 19. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Nature of Divine Revelation. 20 

Truths implied—1. The being of God, 20; 2. Reality of crea¬ 

tion, 21; 3. Divine Nature capable of being revealed, 22; 4. 
Man capable of Divine knowledge, 24; 5. The fallen condition 
of man, 25; theory of the “ Absolute Religion,” 27; doctrine of 
the Fall, the key to supernatural revelation, 29. 

CHAPTER II. 

Man’s Need of Divine Revelation.. 33 

Objection of the Theist, 33; the need proved by facts, 34; due to 
man’s corruption^ 35; no disparagement of natural religion, 36; 
kinds of inspiration distinguished, 37; a true revelation no bur¬ 
den, but a blessing, 38. 


CHAPTER III. 

The Supernatural Claims to Christianity . 40 

The main question—is Christianity human or Divine ? 40; first ap¬ 
peal to the Bible itself, 40; midway position untenable in the 
presence of its claims, 41; St. Matthew’s Gospel, 42; St. Mark 
and St. Luke, 46; St. John’s Gospel, 47; Book of Acts, 50; 
Apostolic Epistles, 53. Conclusion, a supernatural claim of the 
essence of Christianity, 60. 







8 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER IY. page. 

The Reasonableness of Miracles.. 61 


{Examination of Third Essay.) 

Appeal to miracles by Moses, 61; our Lord himself and the apostles, 
61; recent objections, 63. I. Charges against Christian advocates, 
63; reply, 64; an inquirer not a judge, 65; reasoning consistent 
with moral guilt of unbelief, 67; historical and moral evidence 
rightly mingled, 68; belief not a simple act of will, 68; right 
order of honest inquiry, 69; moral preparation needed, 70. II. 
Objections to miracles stated, 73; Scripture view of their origin, 
75; imply a false view of induction, 76; false view of the con¬ 
stancy of natural law, 77; false definition of miracles, 79; contra¬ 
dictions of the skeptical argument, 80. III. Objections to mira¬ 
cles as evidence, 82; definition of miracles, 84; their main use, 
87; relation of external and internal evidence, 88; result of the 
inquiry, 91. 


CHAPTER V. 

The Historical Truth of the New Testament. 95 

Historical character of the Bible, 95; assaults on the Gospels and 
Pentateuch, 96; preliminary remarks, 98; the Book of Acts to the 
death of Herod, 103; to St. Paul’s voyage, 107; internal harmony, 

112 ; the four Gospels—times, 114; places and persons, 117 ; rec¬ 
oncilable diversity, 119. 

CHAPTER YI. 

The Historical Truth of the Old Testament. 123 

I. From the Captivity to Christ—Limits in time, 123; absence of 
miracle, 126; chronological distinctness, 127; fullness of detail, 

129 ; Book of Esther, 130. II. From Solomon to the Captivity. 
Chronology, 132 ; heathen history, 133; Kings and Chronicles, 

136; prophetic books, 137. III. From the Conquest to Solomon. 
General remarks, 139; Book of Joshua, 142; Book of Judges, 147 ; 
its chronology, 150. IV. The Pentateuch, 152; results of induc¬ 
tion, 153. 


CHAPTER VII. 

The Miracles of the Bible.155 

Circular reasoning of modern skeptics, 155. I. Infrequency of mira¬ 
cles, 156. II. Their publicity, 160. III. Their consistent plan, 
162. IV. Their moral purpose, 167. 






CONTENTS. 


9 


CHAPTER VIII. 

The Prophecies of the Old Testament.169 

(Remarks on the Second Essay.) 

Christianity, an appeal to miracles, 169; and to prophecy, 169; ex¬ 
amples in the Gospels, 170; their wide range, 170; recent objec¬ 
tions examined, 176; prophecy, Isa. vii-ix, 179; later prophecies 
of Isaiah, 184; Book of Daniel, its genuineness, 192; conclusion, 
201-203. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Christianity and Written Revelation. 204 

Reception of the Bible, a corollary of Christian faith, 204; general 
outline of the argument, 206; stage of doubt, 208; faith in the 
Gospel, and in the inspiration of the Bible, distinct, though closely 
united, 210; inspiration, a positive idea, 213; entrance of written 
revelation, a greaj era, 214; its uses and reasons, 215; its original 
perfection inferred, 217. 


CHAPTER X. 

The Inspiration of the Old Testament. 220 

Solemn introduction of written revelation, 220; testimonies of our 
Lord himself—1. The temptation, 221; 2. Galilean ministry, 
222; 3. Sermon on the Mount, 223; 4. Charge to the leper, 225; 

5. Testimony to the Baptist, 225; 6. Matthew xii, 3-7, 226; 7. 
Teaching in parables, 227; 8. Tradition, Matthew xv, 1-9, 227; 9. 
The Transfiguration, 228; 10. Divorce, 229; 11. Entrance to 
Jerusalem, 229; 12. Answers to Sadducees, 231; 13. Matthew 
xxiii, 232; 14. The passion, 233; 15, 16. St. Luke’s Gospel, 234, 
235; later hooks, 237; general conclusion, 238. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Inspiration of the New Testament. 240 

Evidence less direct, 240. I. Analogy of the Old Testament, 241; 

II. Special nature of the new dispensation, 242. III. Resem¬ 
blance in structure of New and Old Testament, 244. IV. Prom¬ 
ises to the apostles, 245. V. Their rank compared with the 
prophets, 247. VI. Testimonies in St. Paul’s Epistles to their 
own inspiration, 248. VII. And to the Gospels and Acts, 251. 
VIII. Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, 254. IX. Writings of 
St. John, 257. Conclusion, 260. 






10 CONTENTS. 

^ “in. 

CHAPTER XII. page. 

The Interpretation of Scripture.. 261 


(Remarks on the Seventh Essay.) 

Amount of Biblical literature, 261; temptation thus occasioned, 261; 
recoil from the maxim of Vincentius, 262; counter maxim of the 
Seventh Essay delusive, 263; Bible to be studied naturally, 264; 
its inspiration not mechanical, 265 ; reverently, as the voice of the 
Spirit, 267 ; confusion of the negative criticism, 271; contrast in 
two examples, 273; value of human helps, 276 ; real certainty of 
Bible theology, 280. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

On Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible. 282 

Theory of partial inspiration, 282; its difficulties, 283; divergence 
not contradiction, 284; variety one element of the true definition, 
Heb. i, 1, 285; Scriptures a condensed record, 286; silence, no 
proof of ignorance, 287; inferences not assertions, 288. I. Dis¬ 
crepancies alleged in the Essays, 290. II. Prolegomena to the 
New Testament, 295. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

The Bible and Modern Science. 308 

(Examination of the Fifth Essay.) 

Question stated, 308; its true limits, 309 ; astronomical objection, 

310 ; based on three errors, 311; geological difficulties, 316; opti¬ 
cal representation, 318; break in Gen. i, 2, 324; events of fourth 
day, 330; the firmament, 331; true relation of Genesis and geol- 
ogy, 333-335. 

CHAPTER XV. 

The same continued. 336 

All the Bible of Divine authority, 336 ; contains materials of sci¬ 
ences, not sciences themselves, 340. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Bible and Natural Conscience. 350 

(Remarks on the First Essay.) 

Question stated, 350; direct authority of Scripture, 352; conscience 
not absolute or supreme, 358 ; its true nature, 360; no mediator, 

361; needs to be corrected and purified by the Word of God, 362; 
the Gospel, an external authority, 368. 







CONTENTS. 


11 


t 


CHAPTER XVII. PA0E . 

The Historical Unity of the Bible.371 

I. The historical character of the Bible a mark of the Divine 
Wisdom, 372. II. Its unity of purpose a proof of its Divine 
origin, 375. III. Continuity of outline a distinctive feature, 377. 
IV. Simplicity of style, 379. Y. Condensation of the Bible his¬ 
tories, 381. VI. The Pentateuch, 383. VII. Later historical 
books, 387. VIII. The Gospels, 392. IX. The Acts of the Apos¬ 
tles, 397. Conclusion, 401. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Doctrinal Unity of the Bible.402 

* 

I. Doctrinal harmony in all the main topics of religious faith, 403. 

1. The creation, 404; 2. The unity of God, 406; 3. The Fall and 
corruption of man, 407; 4. The doctrine of a Redeemer, 408 ; 5. 
Salvation by Faith, 409; 6. The need of an atonement, 410; 7. 
Need of regeneration, 411. II. Harmony in mapy other particu¬ 
lars, 412; contrast between the Old and New Testaments, 413; no 
real difference, 413 ; the Law and the Gospel, 415 ; their essential 
unity, 420 ; contrast no contradiction, 421. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Christianity a Progressive Scheme.423 

Object of the Bible, 423; the scheme of redemption, 423; not a 
scheme for the World’s education, 424; redemption of the world a 
progressive scheme, 425; spurious theories of progress, 425; the 
Bible opposed to all such theories, 426; the true progress, 427; 
the promise and Divine forbearance 428 ; the incarnation of 
Christ, 430 ; the final triumph, 432 ; the Word of God, 434. 


































THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Christianity claims to be a Divine revelation, or a 
message of truth from the living God to the children of 
men, contained, embodied, and recorded in the Scriptures 
of the New Testament. It claims, further, to be the sequel 
and completion of earlier messages from the same Divine 
Author, contained and recorded, in like manner, in the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament. Christian faith, in the 
widest sense of the term, consists in the admission of this 
double claim. Infidelity consists in its rejection and denial. 

This denial may assume very different forms. It may be 
coarse, arrogant, and abusive, or polite, modest, and refined 
in its tone. It may load the Bible with abuse, as a gross 
imposture, or admire its poetical beauty, extol its pure 
morality, and treat it with the reverence of the scholar and 
the antiquarian, as containing some of the choicest prod¬ 
ucts of human intelligence. While one type of infidelity 
repels and disgusts by its open blasphemy, another allures 
and fascinates ingenuous minds by an air of caution and 
candor, and puts on the garb of philosophical research, moral 
sensibility, and religious reverence. But these, after all, 
may be only varieties of the same unbelief. The question 
between the Christian and the infidel does not turn upon 
the degree of merit or demerit assigned to the Scriptures, 



14 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

viewed as merely human compositions. It depends on the 
admission or rejection of their Divine authority. Is Chris¬ 
tianity a supernatural message from the living and true 
God, or a mere product of the natural powers of the hu¬ 
man mind? Is the Bible the voice of God, or only the 
voice of some Hebrew historians, poets, and moralists—the 
word of God, or the word of man? 

The form of infidelity which prevailed at the close of 
the last century was daring, open, and blasphemous. * It 
was bred amid the rottenness of a corrupted Church and a 
dissolute society; and ascribing to Christianity all the worst 
abuses of both, it kept no terms with “the wretch” it 
labored to destroy. The experience of seventy years has 
wrought a great change in the tactics of this moral war¬ 
fare. The hopes of an ungodly and blaspheming philoso¬ 
phy were quenched speedily, under the reign of terror, in 
a sea of blood. The liberty, equality, and philanthropy, 
which had trodden the Bible under foot, were replaced, in 
a few years, by the heaviest yoke of military despotism. 
At the same time Christian faith received a fresh impulse, 
and began to win new trophies, by the revival of mission¬ 
ary zeal, the increased circulation of the Word of God, 
and the spread of the Gospel, through the self-denying 
labors of faithful men, in almost every part of the heathen 
world. 

In consequence of these changes, the spirit of unbelief 
has revealed itself, of late years, in features less repulsive 
but more insidious. It rejects the Divine authority of the 
Bible, but is willing to extol its poetical beauty, and to 
recognize in it a high degree of historical value and anti¬ 
quarian interest. It acquits the sacred writers of willful 
imposture, and even gives them praise for high religious 
feeling, for deep thought, and lofty imagination, though it 
refuses to own that they are the messengers of God. Its 


INTRODUCTION. 


15 


motto is no longer that of the unbelieving Pharaoh—“Who 
is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?” It resembles 
more nearly the “Hail, Master” of the false apostle, or the 
attempt of the spirit of divination to enter into partnership 
with the truth, when it cried—“ These men are the servants 
of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of 
salvation.” 

This varied and more subtile form of assault on the 
authority of the Gospel requires increased discernment and 
watchfulness on the part of all the true disciples of Christ. 
Open blasphemies are more easily repelled. They revolt us 
by their gross impiety, put the conscience at once on its 
guard, and may often produce a powerful reaction in favor 
of the truth which they assail. But the sapping and min¬ 
ing process of a covert infidelity, which borrows the very 
phrases of the Gospel, to give them a philosophical mean¬ 
ing, and will own almost every kind of excellency in the 
Scriptures, except the authority of a Divine message, is far 
more perilous and seductive to thoughtful and serious 
minds. The chasm which separates faith from unbelief, 
submission to God from the rejection of his authority, is 
bridged over by a thin layer of ambiguous phrases, and 
thickly strewn with flowers of fancy, and a sentimental 
piety, till it disappears totally from view; and those 
who are thorough unbelievers at heart, mistake them¬ 
selves for the genuine disciples of a pure and enlightened 
Christianity. 

Let us contrast, for example, the ribaldry of Paine and 
Voltaire with the following eulogy on the Bible by a mod¬ 
ern ringleader in the attempt to replace Christian faith by 
deism or natural religion. It will be evident at once how 
total a change has occurred in the weapons of assault; and 
what discernment and caution are required in the friends 
of truth, that they may not be deceived by smooth and 


16 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


complimentary phrases, while the foundations of their faith 
are silently, but vigorously and daringly assailed. 

“This collection of books,” Mr. Parker writes, “has 
taken such hold of the world as no other. The literature 
of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land of 
temples -and heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this 
book from a nation despised alike in ancient and modern 
times. It is read in all the ten thousand pulpits of our 
land. In all the temples of Christendom is its voice lifted 
up week by week. The sun never sets on its glowing page. 
It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the 
palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the 
scholar, and colors the talk of the street. It enters men’s 
closets, mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. 
The Bible attends men in sickness, when the fever of the 
world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow, 
when the Bible lies underneath. The mariner, escaping 
from shipwreck, seizes it the first of his treasures, and 
keeps it sacred to God. It blesses us when we are born, 
gives names to half Christendom, rejoices with us, has sym¬ 
pathy for our mourning, tempers our grief to finer issues. 
It is the better part of our sermons. It lifts man above 
himself. Our best of uttered prayers are in its storied 
speech, wherewith our fathers and the patriarchs prayed. 
The timid man, about to awake from his dream of life, 
looks through the glass of Scripture, and his eyes grow 
bright; he does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way 
unknown and distant, to take the death-angel by the hand, 
and bid farewell to wife and babes and home. Men rest 
on this their dearest hopes. It tells them of God and of 
his blessed Son, of earthly duties and heavenly rest. Fool¬ 
ish men find in it the source of Plato’s wisdom, of the 
science of Newton, and the art of Baphael. 

“Now, for such effects there must be an adequate cause. 


INTRODUCTION. 


IT 


It is no light thing to hold, with an electric chain, a thou¬ 
sand hearts, though but an hour, heating and bounding 
with such fiery speed; what is it, then, to hold the Chris¬ 
tian world, and that for centuries? Are men fed with 
chaff and husks? The authors we reckon great, whose 
articulate breath now sways the nation’s mind, will soon 
pass away, giving place to other great men of a season, 
who in their turn shall follow them to eminence, and then 
to oblivion. Some thousand famous writers come up in this 
century, to be forgotten in the next. But the silver cord 
of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as 
Time chronicles his tens of centuries passed by. Fire acts 
as a refiner of metals: the dross is piled in forgotten heaps, 
but the pure gold is reserved for use, and is current a 
thousand years hence as well as to-day. It is only real 
merit that can long pass for such; tinsel will rust in the 
storms of life; false weights are soon detected there. It is 
only a heart can speak to a heart, a mind to a mind, a 
soul to a soul, wisdom to the wise, and religion to the pious. 
There must then be in the Bible, mind, heart, and soul, 
wisdom and religion; were it otherwise, how could millions 
find it their lawgiver, friend, and prophet? Some of the 
greatest of human institutions seem built on the Bible; 
such things will not stand on chaff, but on mountains of 
rock. What is the secret cause of this wide and deep in¬ 
fluence? It must be found in the Bible itself, and must 
be adequate to the effect.” * 

Such a school of infidelity, which assumes the garb, and 
borrows the phrases of Christianity, requires us to look 
below the surface, before we can discern its real natui’e, and 
guard against the inroads of its subtile delusions. All these 
praises of the Bible, in the writer just quoted, and others 


* Parker’s “ Discourse of Religion,” pp. 237-239, 242. 
2 



18 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of the same type - of thought, are followed by a distinct 
and deliberate rejection of its Divine authority. “The 
conclusion,” we are told, “is forced upon us that the Bible 
is a human work, as much as the ‘Principia’ of Newton or 
Descartes. Some things are beautiful and true, but others 
no man in his senses can accept. Here are the works of 
various writers, thrown capriciously together, and united by 
no common tie but the lids of the bookbinder—two forms 
of religion which differ widely, one the religion of fear, and 
the other of love.” 

The same spirit evidently pervades other writings, which 
profess to set Christianity free from the trammels of a tradi¬ 
tional orthodoxy, and to bring it into harmony with the 
discoveries of modern science. It is essential, then, to look 
beneath the surface of the inquiry, and to examine the 
foundations themselves. A course of argument, like that 
of Paley, may be triumphant and complete against a direct 
charge of imposture, dishonesty, and collusion. But the 
form of temptation which now assails the Church requires 
some previous questions, more subtile and delicate in their 
nature, to be examined. What do we mean by a Divine rev¬ 
elation? What are the conditions on which its possibility, 
its probability, or its certainty depend? What need is 
there that such a revelation should be given to mankind? 
How far can miracles, prophecies, or moral excellence, sep¬ 
arately or in combination, furnish decisive evidence of its 
reality? How may we infer the Divine authority of the 
Bible from the statement of the Bible itself, without a 
vicious circle in our reasoning? How are we to explain 
alleged contradictions between the language of Scripture 
and the results of antiquarian research, and the real or 
supposed discoveries of modern science? How can we 
reconcile the doctrine of Divine inspiration, and the claim 
of the Bible to a supernatural origin, with the innumerable 


INTRODUCTION. 


19 


signs of human authorship, with seeming discrepancies in 
its historical statements, and the diversity of manner and 
style in its different writers? Such questions as these re¬ 
quire to be carefully examined, if a bulwark is to be reared 
against the tide-wave of skeptical thought, which threatens, 
at this moment, to bury the old landmarks of Christian 
faith. 


20 


THE BIBLljJ AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 

What do you mean by a Divine revelation? What are 
the conditions on which the possibility of its occurrence 
depends? These are among the first questions which must 
be answered, that our acceptance of Christianity under the 
character of a message from God may be a well-grounded 
and reasonable faith. 

The first truth, plainly implied, is the being of God 
ais a personal and conscious intelligence. “He that cometh 
to God must believe that he is.” Atheism by its very 
nature excludes all possibility of revelation. If there be 
no God there can be no communication from God to man. 
A blind, mechanical, unconscious Fate can never be the 
source of intelligible messages to intelligent beings. All 
faith in Divine revelation must imply a previous conviction 
that “there is a God in heaven who revealeth secrets”— 
an unseen lawgiver who is capable of making known his 
will to mankind. 

That faith in God, however, which must precede our 
belief in a Divine message may be exceedingly dim, vague, 
and imperfect. It need not be more than a strong impres¬ 
sion that there is some unseen intelligence higher, greater, 
and wiser than men. The true character of this unknown 
Being may remain concealed in thick darkness till it is 
learned from his own messages. Atheism makes the ac¬ 
ceptance of a Divine revelation a contradiction and an im¬ 
possibility. A full and adequate knowledge of God, apart 


THE NATURE OP DIVINE REVELATION. 


21 


from such a revelation, and before it is received, would 
degrade it into a useless and unmeaning superfluity. 

A second truth, equally implied in the fact of revelation, 
is THE REALITY op created existence. Those who re¬ 
ceive a Divine message must be distinct from him who 
sends it. It may seem needless at first sight to dwell 
even for a moment on a truth so clear and self-evident. 
Philosophers, however, both in ancient and modern times, 
have often stumbled at the very threshold of true science, 
and have mistaken a denial of the earliest lessons of self- 
consciousness for superiority to vulgar prejudice, and a 
proof of their own more profound wisdom. The Maya or 
illusion of the Brahman, the absorption of Buddhism, the 
theories of Spinoza, the skeptical philosophy of Hume, and 
some later forms of German speculation, agree in denying 
the distinct reality of created existence. Whenever the 
Scriptural idea of creation is replaced by one of emanation 
or development, such a result seems naturally to follow. 
Pantheism in all its forms, no less than mere atheism, 
excludes revelation, and makes it impossible. If the souls 
of men are only parts of the Infinite Soul of the universe, 
there may be strange pulsations of life in this complex 
universe of being; but revelation, or the conveyance of 
truth from a Creator to his own creatures, becomes a logical 
contradiction. We must believe that we are, as well as 
that God is, before we can believe that God has made 
to his erring and sinful creatures a true revelation of his 
own will. 

A Divine message, like a mediator, is “not of one.” 
It requires evidently two distinct parties—a giver and a 
receiver. The existence of the rational creature must be 
real, or there can be no manifestation of the Creator. This 
fundamental truth of our consciousness, without which all 
revelation would be impossible, is confirmed and ratified 


22 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


by the very first utterance of revealed religion when it 
tells us that “in the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth,” and that man himself was formed “in the 
image of God.” 

A third truth, also implied in the acceptance of a Divine 
revelation, is the power op God to make known his 
NATURE AND WILL TO HIS OWN CREATURES. His absolute 
dominion and infinite greatness do not make it impossible 
for him to reveal himself to men. The conception would 
indeed be strange, of a Being condemned by his own per¬ 
fection to an eternal solitude; able to give life and reason 
to finite and intelligent creatures; but unable, because he 
is infinite, to bridge over the immense chasm which sepa¬ 
rates him from his own works, or to make known to those 
creatures his mind and will. On the contrary, one of those 
perfections which reason plainly requires us to ascribe to 
him, is the capability of revealing himself to all the ra¬ 
tional creatures he has made. We may here apply the de¬ 
cisive reasoning of the Psalmist: “ He that planted the ear, 
shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not 
see?” The argument, when carried a step further, is 
equally cogent. He that fashioned the tongue, shall he 
not be able to make his voice heard in clearest accents, 
and to communicate his mind and will to the children of 
men? 

It is quite possible, in recoiling from the proud claims 
of natural reason, while it pretends to form a priori systems 
of the universe, to fall into error no less dangerous on the 
opposite side. The finite can not comprehend the infinite. 
Hence the inference may be drawn that the nature of God 
must remain forever inaccessible and wholly unknown. 
But this would be an illusion contradicted by every anal¬ 
ogy in every field of science. In all subjects, from the 
lowest to the highest, partial but real knowledge is the 


THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 23 

essential condition of a created and finite intelligence. 
Created existence is a middle term between nonentity and 
absolute being. The knowledge of rational creatures, in 
like manner, is a middle term between pure nescience and 
perfect omniscience. That a real, genuine, though, of 
course, an imperfect knowledge of God is attainable, and 
ought to be attained, is one of the fundamental doctrines 
both of natural and revealed religion. It ranks side by 
side with the doctrine of creation, that is, faith in the re¬ 
ality of our own existence as the rational and intelligent 
creatures of God. 

In every subject of thought knowledge may be real with¬ 
out being exhaustive or complete. The landscape may be 
spread beneath our eye in clear outline, though parts near 
the horizon are seen dimly, and all that lies beyond that 
horizon is wholly hidden from our view. The knowledge 
that two and two are four is within the reach of a child: it 
is a definite truth contrasted with a falsehood, in excess 
and defect, on either side; but to comprehend all the prop¬ 
erties and relations of any one number—even two , the sim¬ 
plest of them all—would require omniscience. There is no 
room for a contrast, in this respect, between the knowledge 
of God and any other kind of knowledge whatever. The 
maxim, “We know in part,” applies impartially to every 
field of natural, moral, and theological science. The de¬ 
grees of our knowledge or ignorance may differ widely. 
Fallen man knows much of nature, little of himself, and 
least of his Maker. But even where his knowledge is 
Greatest, far more than he has learned remains still un- 
known; and even where his ignorance is deepest, some 
traces remain, though in broken characters, of “the work 
of the law written in the heart.” 

Such is the third truth implied in the idea of a revela¬ 
tion, that the will and character, the ways and purposes of 


24 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


God, are capable of being made known to his intelligent 
creatures. But when we speak of a revelation to mankind, 
a further doctrine is implied—that man, in his actual 
STATE, HAS A CAPACITY FOR LEARNING AND KNOWING THE 
TRUTH OF GOD. 

If we had no faculty of reason distinguishing us from 
the brutes, it would be unmeaning to address to us any 
message that requires the exercise of intelligence. There 
must be powers and capacities receptive of Divine truth, 
or else revelation would be impossible, and the claim of 
Christianity to be a message from God to mankind would 
be convicted of absurdity. It could no longer have any 
reasonable foundation on which to rest. 

This truth, however plain, has been often obscured, and 
perhaps sometimes even denied, by overzealous advocates 
of Christian orthodoxy. The strong statements of Scrip¬ 
ture respecting the moral disease and inability of man may 
be so combined and isolated as to engender a dull, passive 
fatalism, and turn into an idle mockery that earnest appeal 
to the human conscience which runs throughout the whole 
course of the Word of God. The heart of sinners, we are 
told, is gross; their ears are heavy; their eyes are blind; 
they are “dead in trespasses and sins.” Such passages, 
taken alone, might appear to teach a natural incapacity 
for discerning any moral and religious truth rather than 
deep moral aversion from the messages of God. But other 
statements, equally strong and clear, restore the balance 
of truth. There is a frequent appeal to the conscience of 
the sinner himself on the equity of the Divine commands: 
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” 
“And now, 0 inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, 
judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.” “0, 
my people, wherein have I wearied thee? testify against 
me.” “Yea, and why even of your own selves judge ye 


THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 25 

not what is right?” The corruption of the sinful heart 
of man, and its averseness from the messages of God, is 
vividly portrayed in striking metaphors; but the presence 
of a natural capacity to discern the authority of those 
messages and to recognize their equity is also stated in 
the most emphatic and decisive terms. 

These four main truths—the being of God, the reality of 
created existence, the communicableness of Divine knowl¬ 
edge, and the capacity of men for apprehending spiritual 
truth—are fundamental conditions and prerequisites of all 
faith in revealed religion. They separate the Christian 
believer at the outset from the atheist, the pantheist, or 
philosophical Buddhist, the skeptical idealist of the trans¬ 
cendental school, and the skeptical materialist of the posi¬ 
tive philosophy. One further truth, however, is required, 
which distinguishes Christian faith from the most subtile 
and specious variety of unbelief—the doctrine of spiritual 
theism, with its admission of a constant, universal, uninter¬ 
mitted revelation of the will of God to the whole race of 
mankind. This further truth, on which the doctrine of 
supernatural revelation, when viewed practically, will be 
found to rest, is the fallen condition of man, which 
requires special interpositions of Divine love and wisdom 
in order to effect his recovery. 

Let us conceive a world of perfect moral purity, where 
no cloud of sin has ever dimmed the light of the Divine 
presence, or concealed the Holy One from the view of his 
own creatures. There might still, no doubt, be precepts 
and commands of the Creator, the reason of which was not 
explained, and which might retain the character of out¬ 
ward messages, communicated directly by the Word and 
the Spirit of God to sinless beings, willing subjects of the 
Divine authority. But where all was light the only con¬ 
trast would consist in various degrees of the same heavenly 

3 


26 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


brightness. The heavens would declare the glory of their 
Maker, and the firmament would show his handiwork. 
Every breath, every pulse of life, in every creature, would 
be referred instinctively to its Divine Author. His presence 
would be felt and his praise would be sung in the wonder¬ 
ful workmanship of the human frame, and in every exer¬ 
cise of the higher faculties of the soul within. All nature 
would be redolent of worship; all creatures would reflect, 
like unsullied mirrors, some ray of the Divine goodness. 
Life, in all its forms and in all its activities, would be one 
series of ceaseless revelations of the goodness and wisdom 
of the Creator. The world itself would be bathed in the 
light of the Divine presence. Revelations, ever new and 
endlessly varied, would be imparted to the souls of men by 
every sunrise and every sunset, by the song of the birds 
and the fragrance of the flowers, by the joys of childhood 
and the ripened wisdom of age, by all the beauties of the 
earth and all the glories of the sky. There might still be, 
from time to time, special manifestations of God’s gracious 
presence, and more signal communications of his truth and 
love, by the visits of angels, or direct appearance of the 
Son of God. But where all was light and love the sense 
of contrast between these special revelations and the ordi¬ 
nary course of Providence, since this itself would be a 
continual and conscious revelation of God’s presence and 
love, would almost disappear. A crystal palace, whose 
transparent walls admit the full daylight on every side, 
may receive a richer splendor when the sun breaks forth 
from a cloud and lights it up with noonday brilliance; but 
there was no darkness before, and that fuller light, however 
pleasant and joyful it may be, scarcely receives the name 
of a revelation. But let one such ray of sunlight, through 
some narrow crevice, visit the low dungeon whose massive 
walls exclude the least beam of day, whose narrow window. 


THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 27 

choked with dust, can do no more than make darkness 
visible, and where some unhappy prisoner is pining in 
hopeless gloom, and then it is a revelation indeed. The 
light becomes more conspicuous and more joyful by the 
sudden contrast with the previous darkness. 

Pure theism or spiritualism is the most subtile and plaus¬ 
ible rival of Christian faith. It approaches nearest to it, 
adopts its phrases, borrows its morality, and nestles, as it 
were, close to its side. It rejects the open blasphemies of 
atheism, and the misty dreams of a pantheistic philosophy. 
It allows, and even asserts, that God is able to make him¬ 
self known to his creatures, and that man has faculties 
capable of receiving Divine communications. So far the 
spiritualist, the disciple of “Absolute Religion,” and the 
Christian believer, travel side by side; but here their paths 
diverge from each other. Christianity affirms the doctrine 
of the fall, or a moral degeneracy and corruption of all 
mankind, which makes a supernatural provision of mercy 
desirable, and even essential, for their recovery. The spir¬ 
itualist sets the doctrine aside, as degrading to human 
nature, and a mere dream of melancholy superstition. On 
this rejection he builds his own theory of revelation; and 
the following extract from the eloquent writer already 
quoted will show its total contrariety to the lessons of 
Christian faith: 

“We have direct access to God through reason, con¬ 
science, the religious sentiment, just as we have direct 
access to nature through the eye, the ear r or the hand. 
Through these channels, and by means of a law, certain, 
regular, and universal as gravitation, God inspires man, 
makes revelation of truth. This inspiration is no miracle, 
but a regular mode of God’s action on conscious spirit, as 
gravitation on unconscious matter. It is not a rare conde- 
scension of God, but a universal uplifting of man. To 


28 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


obtain a knowledge of duty, man is not sent away, outside 
of bimself, to ancient documents, for the only rule of life 
and practice; the word is very nigh him, even in his heart; 
and by this word he is to try all documents whatever. In¬ 
spiration, like God’s omnipresence, is not limited to the few 
writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans, 
but is coextensive with the race. 

“This theory does not make God limited, partial, or ca¬ 
pricious. It exalts man. While it honors the excellence 
of a religious genius—of a Moses or a Jesus—it does not 
pronounce their character monstrous, as the supernatural 
theory; but natural, human, beautiful, revealing the pos¬ 
sibility of mankind. Prayer is not a soliloquy, not an ad¬ 
dress to a deceased man, but a sally into the spiritual 
world, whence we bring back light and truth. There are 
windows toward God as toward the world. There is no in¬ 
tercessor or mediator between man and God; for man can 
speak, and God can hear, each for himself. He requires 
no advocate to plead for men, who need not pray by at¬ 
torney. Each soul stands close to the omnipresent God, 
may feel his beautiful presence, and have familiar access to 
him—get truth at first hand from its Author. Is inspira¬ 
tion confined to theological matters alone? Is Newton less 
inspired than Simon Peter? . . . Plato and Newton, 

Milton and Isaiah, Leibnitz and Paul, Mozart, Raphael, 
Phidias, Praxiteles, and Orpheus, receive into their various 
forms the one spirit from God most high.” * 

This theory of inspiration, it must be plain, is based on 
a silent assumption of the unfallen and sinless condition of 
mankind. Christianity, in its claim to be a supernatural 
revelation, special and distinctive in its messengers and 
messages, though world-wide in its aims, starts from the 


* Parker’s “ Discourse,” pp. 160-165. 



THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 


29 


opposite assumption, that mankind have fallen from original 
uprightness, and that means more powerful than the voice 
of nature alone are needed for their recovery. 

The doctrine of the fall, once received, explains all the 
special features of supernatural revelation. Nature, in all 
her works, in the rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, 
may still bear witness to the bounty of her Maker. The 
heavens may still declare the glory of God, and the firma¬ 
ment may show his handiwork. But sin has made the eyes 
of men dim, and their ears deaf, that they seldom heed the 
message; and it has rendered deeper revelations of God’s 
character than mere bounty and general benevolence essen¬ 
tial to man’s recovery from a state of guilt, alienation, and 
moral ruin. It fills the conscience with terrors, and the 
understanding with strong and strange delusions. It turns 
men into tempters and deceivers, each to the other, instead 
of multiplying mirrors, reflecting brightly upon each other 
the beams of the Divine goodness. Its universal tendency, 
and, in dark times, its actual result, is to pervert human 
society into a gigantic system of moral falsehood, in which 
men are “foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts 
and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating 
one another.” Tit. iii, 3. The light from God’s natural 
works still shines upon this land of mist and darkness; 
but “the darkness comprehendeth it not:” it is too feeble 
to penetrate the thick gloom. Every field of nature is 
either peopled with phantom gods—the mere reflections of 
human lust and appetite—or second causes alone are seen, 
and the great First Cause is thrust out of sight and forgot¬ 
ten. It becomes needful, then, by signs and wonders, to 
break through the monotony of nature, and to force on re¬ 
luctant hearts the conviction that there is a living God, the 
Lord of nature, higher and nobler than the laws he has 
ordained for his creatures, the true Sovereign of the uni- 


30 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


verse. Since men have become mutual deceivers, unable to 
discern even the simpler lessons of natural religion, and 
still more to anticipate the mysteries of redemption, and to 
devise, or even to understand, the means required for their 
own recovery, special messengers of truth must be provided, 
if the work of mercy is to be carried on. The Word of 
God, whether before his incarnation, or incarnate in human 
flesh, may thus have to become the messenger to sinners 
of his Father’s will. Angels, whose vision of God has 
been dimmed by no fall, though their intercourse with a 
fallen race is almost wholly suspended, may still be sent, 
from time to time, on errands of mercy or of judgment, at 
the bidding of their Lord. Holy men, the choice first- 
fruits of redemption, in whom the work of moral recovery 
is more advanced than in their fellows, may be raised, from 
time to time, above themselves, and shielded from the in¬ 
fluence of remaining infirmity and error, in order to become 
the vehicles of Divine messages to their fellow-men. And 
thus by prophets, by angels, and the Son of God himself, 
attested by miracles and by prophecies, a system of Divine 
revelation may be carried on, which meets the necessities 
of a fallen race, speaks to mankind in louder and clearer 
tones, and with wider and deeper truths, than a mere re¬ 
ligion of nature can attain; secures at every step of its 
progress some partial victories of truth and righteousness 
over sin, error, and delusion; and moves on with firm and 
measured step toward a long-promised consummation of re¬ 
stored holiness, when the tabernacle of God shall be with 
men, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

To decide, then, between the high-sounding dreams of 
spiritualism, with its pretensions to universal inspiration, 
and the modest claims of Christianity, with its specialities of 
miracle, prophecy, and sacrifice, we need only read the 
history of the world, and its long ages of sin and sorrow. 


THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 


31 


The voice of nature might welj suffice for an unfallen race; 
or if it were supplemented by special messages from heaven, 
these angels’ visits need not he “few and far between,” and 
would lose their strange and miraculous character amid the 
unclouded sunshine of a sinless world. But when mankind 
have turned their backs on the light, and plunged them¬ 
selves into thick darkness; when habits of sin have blunted 
the conscience, and tainted and defiled every faculty of the 
soul; when the laws of a holy God have been broken, and 
denounce a curse against the rebels who have trampled 
them under their feet; when the pall of death broods over 
the whole race, and the daily spectacle of its ravages, with 
no return from the grave, has almost blotted out all faith 
in the soul’s immortality; when life is short, and death is 
near, and judgment at hand, and conscience accuses, and 
the law of God condemns, and dark clouds of fear and re¬ 
morse have separated the souls of men from their God—it 
needs a clearer and stronger voice than that of nature 
alone, to restore peace to the troubled heart, to subdue the 
inveterate power of sin, and open the pathway of life to 
the trembling sinner. For Nature herself has solemn mes¬ 
sages, and can terrify the guilty with the fear of judgment 
to come, no less than delight the children of innocence 
with her tones of gentleness and peace. Clouds and thick 
darkness, the volcano and the earthquake, the lightning, 
the whirlwind and the hurricane, the spreading fever, and 
the destroying pestilence, all have their own voice of fear 
and alarm to the guilty consciences of men. They echo in 
loud accents the warning of the Bible itself, that “the 
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodli¬ 
ness and unrighteousness of men.” 

Christianity, then, in claiming to be a special and super¬ 
natural revelation, implies and presupposes the great doc¬ 
trine of the fall of mankind. Whenever this truth is de- 


32 


THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. 


nied, the need for any such special interference of God, to 
make known his ways, will cease to he recognized, and the 
sufficiency of the mere light of nature will be maintained. 
The specialities of revealed religion will then be held for 
so many proofs of its arbitrary and capricious character, so 
as to make it unworthy a God of universal benevolence. 
The whole provision of supernatural evidence, in miracles 
and prophecies, will seem a laborious superfluity; and then, 
by natural consequence, an incredible deviation from the 
fixed and usual laws of Divine Providence. When a whole 
neighborhood are enjoying perfect health, the arrangements 
of a hospital, with its nurses and physicians, its wards and 
couches, its medicines and surgical instruments, however 
complete or skillfully devised, may seem to be only a com¬ 
plicated and laborious folly. “They that be whole need 
not a physician, but they that are sick.” An unfallen and 
sinless race would have little need for a long series of mi¬ 
raculous messages and supernatural revelations. 

Once admit, however, the truth that man is fallen and 
apostate, and needs rescuing from moral degradation and 
spiritual danger, and the seeming anomaly disappears. 
Christianity, with its miracles and prophecies, and myste¬ 
rious doctrines, is no longer an inexplicable paradox, a 
strange, incredible excrescence on the simpler creed of pure 
theism and universal philanthropy—a creed maintained to 
be complete and effective, without this higher aid, to meet 
every want of the souls of men. On the contrary, the 
truth of its own descriptions of its blessed office commends 
itself at once to the burdened conscience and the sorrowing 

o 

heart. The salvation it brings to sinners is “the power of 
God, and the wisdom of God;” and the Savior in whom it 
centers is “the Dayspring from on high,” sent on a visit 
of mercy to a race of wandering prodigals, “ to give light 
to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” 


man’s need of divine revelation. 


33 


CHAPTER II. 

MAN’S NEED OF DIVINE REVELATION. 

“I deem it unnecessary to prove that mankind stood in 
need of a revelation, because I have met with no serious 
person who thinks that, even under the Christian revela¬ 
tion, we have too much light, or any degree of assurance 
that is’superfluous.” 

The objection, which Paley has thus pithily dismissed in 
his opening sentence, has been revived by some late writers 
in a more paradoxical form. A supernatural revelation, 
they affirm gravely, instead of a help, would be only a 
hinderance to the souls of men. It would charge the 
scheme of Providence with an inexcusable defect. Its ad¬ 
mission disparages and sets aside natural religion, and 
denies the ceaseless activity of the Divine goodness. It 
would lay a heavy yoke upon the reason and conscience, 
and subject them to a degrading and oppressive tyranny. 
The charge has been made in these words: 

“ This theory makes inspiration a very rare miracle, con¬ 
fined to one nation, and to some score of men in that na¬ 
tion, who stand between us and God. We can not pray in 
our own name, but in that of the Mediator, who makes in¬ 
tercession for us. It exalts miraculous persons, and de¬ 
grades men. Our duty is not to inquire into the truth of 
their word; reason is no judge of that: we must put faith 
in all which all of them tell us. It sacrifices reason, con¬ 
science, and love to the words of the miraculous men; and 
thus makes its mediator a tyrant who rules over the soul by 


34 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


external authority, not a brother who acts in the soul by 
awakening its dormant powers. It says the canon of reve 
lation is closed; God will no longer act on man as here¬ 
tofore. We have come at the end of the feast, are born in 
the latter days and dotage of mankind, and can only get 
light by raking among the ashes of the past. The religion 
of supernaturalism is worn-out and second-handed. Its 
' vice is to restrict the Divine presence and action to towns, 
places, and persons. It overlooks the fact, that if religious 
truth be necessary for all, then it must either have been 
provided and put within the reach of all, or else there is a 
fault in the Divine plan. If the two main points—a knowl¬ 
edge of the existence of God, and of the duty we owe to 
him—be within the reach of man’s natural powers, how is 
a miracle, or the tradition of a miracle, needed to reveal the 
minor doctrines involved in the universal truth? Where, 
then, is the use of miraculous interposition?”* 

I. The first objection is here made to lie against the 
notion itself, that a supernatural revelation could be need¬ 
ful, or even desirable, for mankind. It would imply, it 
is said, a serious fault in the plan of Providence. That 
scheme must be perfect; and could not be perfect if men 
stood in need of any supernatural light. No matter what 
the historical evidence may be, that men, without suqh aid, 
have groped. for ages in thick darkness, the whole must 
give way, in the view of such confident theorists, to this 
one aphorism of a priori reasoning, and is refuted by their 
own conception of what a perfect scheme of Providence 
inevitably requires. 

The simplest reply, then, to this first objection, is an 
appeal from dreams to facts, from the fancies of rash and 
ignorant speculation to the stern realities of the world’s 


* “ Discourse of Religion,” pp. 156, 158. 



man’s need of divine revelation. 


35 


history. Whatever the means of natural light which, in 
the view of such theorists, must have been provided, the 
great bulk of mankind have been steeped for long ages in 
gross religious darkness. The same writers who assure us 
that a miraculous revelation is needless, or else the Divine 
plan would be imperfect, map out the religious history of 
the past into three stages, which they describe as follows: 
The first is Fetichism, in which “the saint is a murderer, 
and the fancied God presides over the butchery.” The 
second is Polytheism, in which “the gods were to be had 
at a bargain;” and the priesthood “separated morality from 
religion, life from belief, good sense from theology,” and 
the story is “a tragedy of sin and woe.” The third and 
latest is a corrupt Monotheism, whose disciples “ make 
earth a demon-land, and the one God a king of devils.” 
Men have groped, it seems, in such blindness for thou¬ 
sands of years; but they must be held, on a priori grounds, 
to have lived all the time in clear daylight, rather than 
skeptics will own that there could be any real need for a 
supernatural revelation. 

But the objection is no less faulty and worthless in its 
reasoning, than opposed to the plainest facts in the relig¬ 
ious history of the world. Miraculous messages imply no 
fault in the Divine plan, but only sin and corruption on 
the part of men. Means of religious light, adequate to 
the wants of sinless creatures, have been provided from 
the first, in the works of nature and the rich bounties of 
Providence, and have never been withdrawn. It is sin and 
rebellion alone which have dulled the understanding, and 
perverted the will, so that nature no longer avails to lead 
the souls of men “through nature up to nature’s God.” 
This same apostasy has also called into exercise deeper 
attributes of the Godhead, and has made it needful for 
men to apprehend higher truths than nature alone could 


36 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


teach them, before they can be recovered to the lost favor 
and image of their Maker again. Even in the outward 
world, the food of health is far more abundant than the 
medicines which are required in sickness. The profligate, 
who has ruined his health by vice and intemperance, has 
no right to blame the constitution of nature, if the reme¬ 
dies of the physician, unlike his daily bread, are costly in 
price, and possibly difficult to procure. Christianity, on 
the face of it, professes to be a Divine remedy for a dan¬ 
gerous moral disease. The Savior, to whom it points, is 
the physician of souls. The disease which needs an effect¬ 
ual cure, is guilt, disobedience, and rebellion against the 
Divine will. Those who are suffering from such a malady 
only prove Its depth and malignity, when they claim that 
the Great Physician shall consult their notions of equity, 
rather than his own wisdom and holiness, in the means he 
may graciously devise for restoring guilty and rebellious 
sinners to moral health and happiness again. 

II. The second charge against miraculous revelation is, 
that it would be positively hurtful, because it disparages 
and sets aside natural religion, and confines inspiration to 
a few persons only, in a remote age of the world’s history. 

The reply to this strange indictment is very simple. The 
gift of revelation withdraws from mankind nothing which 
they really possessed before. Instead of blotting out the 
lessons of God’s natural works, it revives them, and makes 
all those works speak in clearer accents than ever to the 
souls of men. The only sacrifice it involves is that of 
mischievous delusions, by which men indulge in vain fan¬ 
cies of light and knowledge, while they are really sunk in 
gross darkness. It forbids the guilty rebel to say “Peace, 
peace” when there is no peace. It forbids the cruel sav¬ 
age, “his hands smeared all over with the blood of human 
sacrifice,” to think that he needs no mediator or advocate, 


man’s need of divine revelation. 37 

but “stands close to God, may feel liis beautiful presence, 
and have familiar access to him,” and, without change or 
repentance, may “sit down” with prophets and saints “in 
the kingdom of God.” All the means of instruction which 
nature without or conscience within supply to men, remain 
as before, or rather their efficacy is largely increased. The 
only loss is that of the moral delirium, which boasts of 
health amidst the symptoms of a raging fever; and extols 
man’s higher capacities for knowing and loving his Maker, 
amidst the wide-spread ruin of a moral desolation which 
has reached from the first dawn of history down to our 
own days, making every page of the world’s history resem¬ 
ble the roll of the prophet, full of “lamentations, and 
mourning, and woe.” 

Again, the charge that inspiration is thus confined to a 
few individuals, and the presence of God restricted to par¬ 
ticular times, places, and persons, has no other ground than 
a palpable abuse of terms. Inspiration, in the sense in 
which the Christian claims it for prophets and evangelists, 
instead of being made universal by the skeptic, is denied 
and rejected altogether. In the sense affirmed by the 
skeptic himself, or as a common gift or capacity of all 
men, it is not denied by the Christian, but is only freed 
from an absurd and mischievous exaggeration. It is the 
constant and daily prayer of the Church of Christ, to the 
God of the Bible, that “by his holy inspiration we may 
think those things which be good; and by his merciful 
guiding we may perform the same,” and that he would 
“cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of 
his Holy Spirit, so that we may perfectly love him, and 
worthily magnify his holy name.” The double doctrine 
of a natural action of the Spirit of God on the souls of 
all men, in sustaining and upholding their various facul¬ 
ties, and of a special action on the souls of the good and 


38 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


holy, to renew and sanctify them from day to day, is a 
main and fundamental part of the orthodox Christian faith. 
The belief in a more special inspiration, usually confined 
to “holy men of God,” but given in some rare cases to 
others, and designed to fit them for the special work of 
transmitting pure truth from God to their fellow-men, does 
not interfere in the least with those wider statements of 
the Gospel which are confirmed by the daily experience of 
all pious Christians. There is thus a natural, a moral, and 
a prophetic inspiration. The natural belongs to all man¬ 
kind. Gen. ii, 7; Job xxxii, 8. The moral is the priv¬ 
ilege of holy and regenerate souls. The prophetic belongs 
to those whom the sovereign will of the Supreme Lawgiver 
has singled out to convey and record his own messages, 
with Divine authority, for the general benefit of the human 
race. 

III. The third objection brought against Divine revela¬ 
tion is, that it lays a yoke upon the reason and conscience, 
and makes them subject to a degrading tyranny. 

The true relation between the Bible and human conscience 
needs a distinct inquiry, since it is this point which forms 
the main divergence between Christian faith and a negative 
or semi-infidel theology. As a preliminary objection, this 
indictment against the word of God in the Bible only calls 
for a brief reply. Assuming the claim of a supposed reve¬ 
lation to be false, and its contents to be unworthy of that 
God in whose name it is given, there can be no doubt that 
the admission of its Divine authority will impose a heavy 
burden upon the conscience and reason of all whom it has 
deceived. They must either lower their conceptions of the 
Almighty to the level of a human forgery, or else put a 
force upon language, and submit to an immoral practice 
of disingenuous and forced interpretations of the messages 
they profess to receive as Divine. At least this result 


man’s need oe divine revelation. 


39 


must follow, unless we ascribe a moral wisdom and excel¬ 
lence to the pretended revelation, which it seems incredible 
that a mere imposture should attain. 

On the other hand, if the God of truth and wisdom has 
really been pleased to make known his will to men, and 
has given them messages sealed with clear marks of their 
Divine origin, then the obligation to receive these messages 
in their true character, and to use them for gaining insight 
into the ways and works of God, can never be felt as an 
oppressive yoke by the wise, the humble, and the pious. 
Such a gift can be irksome and oppressive only to the 
proud, the self-willed, and the profane. It is not reason 
and conscience, but rather a satanic pride, which refuses 
to sit humbly at the feet of our Lord; and instead of 
wondering at “the gracious words which proceed from his 
lips,” and treasuring them in the heart with gladness and 
reverence, sees in them a usurpation on its own fancied 
right to speculate, without restraint and without a guide, 
on the character, the works, and the providence of the 
Most High. The mere fact that such an objection could 
be made to the reception of the Bible, as endued with 
Divine authority, by those who have been reared in a 
Christian land, and have had means of acquainting them¬ 
selves with its treasures of grace and holiness, is only a 
new illustration of the truth of one of its inspired warn¬ 
ings. The God of the Bible, in every age, hides his truth 
from the wise and prudent, and reveals it to babes. “He 
hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he 
hath sent empty away.” 


40 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The contrast between Christian faith and that school of 
thought which professes to introduce a more free and ra¬ 
tional theology, lies much deeper than the question whether 
the canon of Scripture be perfect, and its inspiration verbal, 
plenary, and complete. It relates to that main feature of 
the whole message on which its practical worth and excel¬ 
lency entirely depends. Is Christianity itself human or 
divine? Is it simply a product of imposture or super¬ 
stition, or at best of the unaided wisdom of imperfect, 
prejudiced, and fallible men? Or is it the voice of the 
living God speaking to his creatures by prophets, whom 
he has himself commissioned and inspired, and by his only 
begotten Son? Is it a message, every part of which must 
stand or fall separately, according to our private opinion 
of its merit? or one which he has ratified, in all its parts, 
“with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of 
the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” 

Here the first duty of every honest inquirer is to learn 
what the writers of the Bible themselves affirm respecting 
the nature of their message. Their statement, of course, 
will not of itself prove the reality of their Divine mission. 
“If I bear record of myself,” our Lord said to the Phari¬ 
sees, 11 my record is not true.” The mere assertion of 
high claims, unsustained by any further evidence, is always 
suspicious. It may often be a mark of imposture or of 
fanatical delusion. But still an important end is at once 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 41 

fulfilled when it is seen that the Law and the Gospel, as 
recorded by Moses and the Evangelists, do manifestly claim 
for themselves a supernatural character as the proof of 
their Divine origin. The controversy is greatly narrowed. 
Men will be saved from the delusion of supposing that 
they are genuine Christians of a more enlightened school, 
while they submit the Gospel piecemeal to the tribunal of 
their own private reason, and admit or reject in its pages 
just whatever pleases them. If the Bible is, or even if it 
contains , a Divinely-attested message, then our first duty is 
to ascertain to what part, whether more or less, the attesta¬ 
tion is to be given, and to receive all such portions with 
the docility of a childlike faith. But a book, every part 
of which is to be received or rejected independently, ac¬ 
cording as we judge its histories to be true or faulty, its 
doctrines reasonable or foolish, its morals sound and true, 
or unsound and erroneous, differs in no respect from any 
other book whatever. Miraculous attestations to such a 
message are a ridiculous superfluity, since we can not tell 
what it is they are meant to attest. There would thus be 
an apparatus of special interferences for no practical end; 
a miraculous derangement of the course of nature, and a 
singular change in the usual laws of Providence, completely 
wasted and thrown away. 

Every midway position between belief and disbelief be¬ 
comes untenable, in the presence of a distinct claim by our 
Lord and his apostles to a miraculous commission. If this 
claim be true, then a merely eclectic Christianity is an ab¬ 
surdity in logic, and, in morals, a direct rebellion against 
the authority of God. If the claim be false, those who 
make it must be either impostors or fanatics; and hence 
they must rank lower, either in simple honesty, or in wis¬ 
dom and good sense, than good men of an ordinary stamp, 

who have never been guilty of so great an extravagance. 

4 


42 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


The mere existence of this claim on their part, when once 
proved, shuts out every compromise. Those can not he 
safe guides, as mere human teachers and moralists, who 
have either feigned or fancied a direct commission from 
Heaven they never received. It is absurd in this case to 
deny the authority of the message, and still to look up to 
the messengers with high admiration and peculiar defer¬ 
ence. We ought rather to abhor them for their dishonesty, 
or else to pity them for their delusion. The remark of a 
modern skeptical writer has a wider application than to the 
doctrine and the moral virtue directly named in it. “ When 
the New Testament attributes humility to Christ, it is man¬ 
ifestly under the notion of him as a Divine Being, who has 
descended from a celestial condition into this lower state 
of human suffering and degradation. As soon as Jesus is 
regarded as a real [mere] man, the reversed condition of 
necessity requires the corresponding reversal of the moral 
characteristic* into one or another phase of lofty daring and 
unmeasured aspiration.” 

Let us turn, then, to the New Testament, and inquire 
what is its own evidence. Are the miracles and alleged 
fulfillments of prophecy a mere excrescence, which may be 
entirely pruned away, leaving behind them a system of 
pure morality unaltered and unimpaired? Or do they form 
the woof of the whole narrative, so that almost every page, 
and every main fact, receives the stamp of a Divine author¬ 
ity, or else is tainted with a hopeless leprosy of fraud and 
delusion? Let us examine in succession the Gospels of St. 
Matthew and St. John, the Book of Acts, and the Apos¬ 
tolic Epistles. 

I. The Gospel of St. Matthew. 

Out of the twenty-eight chapters of the first Gospel, 
three-fourths contain the mention of some miracle, or some 
asserted fulfillment of prophecy. But this fact alone would 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 

give a very imperfect impression of the way in which the 
supernatural element forms the texture of this Divine 
biography. 

Let us begin with the narrative of our Lord’s birth and 
infancy. The first verse alludes evidently to two leading 
prophecies, ten and fifteen centuries old, as being fulfilled 
in the whole course of the sacred narrative. The birth of 
our Lord is next declared to be a miracle, and also to be 
the fulfillment of a third prophecy in Isaiah. The wise 
men are led te Jerusalem, miraculously, by the star which 
appears to them in the east. They, along with Herod, 
learn the birthplace of Christ from the prophecy of Micah, 
also seven centuries old. The star reappears, and guides 
them to the very place. A dream from God warns them 
not to return to Herod. An angel, by a dream, directs the 
flight of Joseph into Egypt. The angel reappears to direct 
his return, and a fifth dream from God instructs him to 
leave Judea and return to Galilee. 

The opening of the public ministry, in the next two 
chapters, has the same character. We have first, at our 
Lord’s baptism, the opening of the heavens, the descent of 
the Spirit, and the miraculous proclamation from heaven— 
“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” 
Next follows a supernatural fast of forty days, a direct 
conflict of the Redeemer and the tempter, a miraculous 
transfer of our Lord to the pinnacle of the Temple, and a 
record of the ministration of angels. A prophecy of Isaiah 
is shown to be fulfilled in the chosen theater of our Lord’s 
ministry, and his work is affirmed to- be the cure of “all 
manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” 

The Sermon on the Mount is mainly a code of Christian 
morality, but still it contains the strongest assertions of our 
Lord’s supernatural mission. Near its opening the Divine 
authority of the law and the prophets is stated in most 


44 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


emphatic terms; while a claim of like authority on the 
part of our Lord was the main impression his words left 
on the mind of his hearers. “They were astonished at his 
doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority, and 
not as *the scribes.” Miracles, also, are represented as so 
closely linked with his message that many counterfeits 
would arise. “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, 
Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy 
name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many 
wonderful works?” 

In the six chapters that follow, the miraculous element 
is conspicuous from first to last. They begin with the 
healing of the leper, of the centurion’s servant, and the 
mother-in-law of Simon Peter. Many miraculous cures are 
then dismissed in a brief sentence: “When the even was 
come, they brought unto him many that were possessed 
with devils, and he cast out the spirits with his word, and 
healed all that were sick.” Then follows the stilling of the 
tempest, and the dispossession of the demoniacs of Gadara, 
the cure of the palsy and of the issue of blood, the resur¬ 
rection of the ruler’s daughter, the healing of the two blind 
men, and of a dumb man possessed with a devil. The 
eighth and ninth chapters, in short, are filled almost en¬ 
tirely with the mention of these miracles, and close with 
the more general statement that Jesus went through the 
cities and villages “healing every sickness and every dis¬ 
ease among the people.” 

The commission of the twelve apostles confers on them 
miraculous gifts. “ He gave them power over unclean 
spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness 
and all manner of disease.” The words of Christ are re¬ 
corded by which the power was given: “ Heal the sick, 
cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely 
ye have received, freely give.” The reply to the Baptist’s 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 

message alludes to the number of the miracles and their 
notoriety: “Go and show John again those things which ye 
do hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the 
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the 
dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached 
to them; and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended 
in me.” The Baptist’s own mission is next declared to be 
a distinct fulfillment of prophecy. Chorazin, Bethsaida, 
and Capernaum have solemn judgments denounced, because 
of the greatness of the miracles they had witnessed, and of 
their own stubborn unbelief. The next chapter contains 
the cure of the withered hand, and a signal dispossession 
attended by a double cure of dumbness and blindness, which 
fills the people with amazement. The following discourse 
is occasioned by an admission of the truth of the miracles 
on the part of the Pharisees, and their attempt to elude 
the evidence, thus supplied, of our Lord’s divine mission. 
The visit to Nazareth, at the close of the next chapter, 
gives two indirect assertions of the same general fact. The 
Nazarenes exclaim, “Whence hath this man this wisdom 
and these mighty works?” while the Evangelist adds to 
his account of their perplexity the brief and simple com¬ 
ment, “He did not many mighty works there because of 
their unbelief.” 

The next division of the Gospel—chapters xiv-xx—is 
equally full of statements of miracle and fulfilled prophecy. 
It begins with the attempt of Herod to account for our 
Lord’s mighty works by the supposition that the Baptist 
was risen from the dead—xiv, 2. Then follow, in quick 
succession, the healing of many sick on the further side of 
the Sea of Galilee—verse 14—the miraculous feeding of the 
five thousand—verses 15-21—the walking of Jesus on the 
sea—verses 22-27—the attempt of Peter, its partial success 
and speedy failure—verses 28-32—the healing of many 


46 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


sick after the return to the western side—verses 34—36— 
the dispossession of the daughter of the woman of Ca¬ 
naan—chapter xv, 21-28—multiplied cures of “the lame, 
the dumb, the blind, the maimed, and many others”—vs.-29- 
31—and the second miracle of the seven loaves and the 
four thousand—chapter xv, 32-39—a rebuke of the dis¬ 
ciples for their forgetfulness of the two successive miracles 
of the loaves—chapter xvi, 9—a prophecy of our Lord’s 
resurrection—verse 21—the transfiguration—chapter xvii, 
1—the cure of the demoniac child—verse 14—the procure¬ 
ment, miraculously, of the tribute-money—verse 27—and, 
last of all, the healing of the two blind men in the neigh¬ 
borhood of Jericho. Chapter xx, 30-34. 

The last portion, occupied with the events of passion- 
week, begins with the fulfillment of a prophecy of Zech- 
ariah, the healing of the blind and lame in the Temple, 
and the curse on the barren fig-tree, speedily fulfilled; 
while it is chiefly occupied with two main subjects—the 
accomplishment of many prophecies in our Lord’s betrayal 
and crucifixion, and the last and crowning miracle of his 
resurrection from the dead. 

It is needless to enter into the details of the second and 
third Gospels, which agree very nearly with that of St. 
Matthew. St. Mark has thirty-five or thirty-six records of 
miracles^or allusions to their occurrence, and the number 
is still higher in St. Luke. Out of the few incidents 

peculiar to St. Mark, two are records of fresh miracles, 

unnoticed by St. Matthew—the cure of the deaf man who 
had an impediment in his speech, and of the blind man at 
Bethsaida. St. Luke, also, in addition to the miracles of 

the first Gospel, contains the vision of Zechariah, his 

miraculous dumbness and his recovery, the visit of the 
angel to the Virgin, the appearance to the shepherds, the 
prophecy of Simeon, the mission of the seventy with mi- 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 

raculous gifts, like those of the twelve, and their return 
with the joyful exclamation, “Lord, even the devils are 
subject to us through thy name.” The mention of the 
miracles, also, in each of these Gospels, reaches from their 
first opening to their common close in the history of the 
resurrection. 

II. The Gospel of St. John. 

The fourth Gospel has so plainly a doctrinal aim, and is 
composed so largely of our Lord’s discourses, that we might 
expect to find in it only a sparing mention of the miracles. 
This is true of the number of them, but not of their prom¬ 
inence in the history. On the contrary, all the main divi¬ 
sions of this Gospel, and all its chief discourses, depend on 
some miracle of our Lord. 

The opening chapters proclaim his Divine glory, and re¬ 
count his first entrance on his public ministry. And how* 
are they introduced? By a signal testimony of the Baptist, 
our Lord’s forerunner, to the sign by which the Messiah 
would be made known to him. “I saw the Spirit descend¬ 
ing like a dove, and it abode upon him.” And this sign 
concurred with a previous message to the Baptist himself. 
“And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with 
water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see 
the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is 
he which baptized with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and 
bare record that this is the Son of God.” The call of the 
apostles is marked by a miraculous revelation to Nathanael; 
and the opening of our Lord’s ministry by the miracle at 
Cana, and other works in Jerusalem at the feast. The con¬ 
versation with the Samaritan woman ascribes to our Lord 
prophetic insight, plainly supernatural, which forced from 
her the exclamation, “Come, see a man which told me all 
things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” The return 
into Galilee is marked by the cure of the nobleman’s son 


48 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


at Capernaum. The fifth chapter forms a distinct portion 
of the Gospel, separated in time from what precedes and 
follows; and the whole is based upon the cure of the im¬ 
potent man at the pool of Bethesda. The sixth is another 
distinct portion, about the time of the last Passover but 
one. It repeats, with some variations of detail, the mira¬ 
cles of the five thousand and the walking on the sea, re¬ 
corded in the earlier Gospels. It adds also a full mention 
of the discourse at Capernaum, which arose out of the 
miracle, and alludes to it from first to last. The visit at 
the Feast of Tabernacles contains various discourses at 
Jerusalem—chaps, vii-x—but the central fact is the cure of 
the man blind from his birth, which is given in this Gospel 
alone. Then follows the remarkable history of the raising 
of Lazarus, in the eleventh and part of the twelfth chap¬ 
ter, which links itself, by the allusion—xi, 17—with the 
great concourse at our Lord’s last entry into Jerusalem. 
In the midst of the discourses, again, at the Last Supper, 
we find this striking summary of our Lord’s ministry, and 
the guilt of Jewish unbelief: “If I had not done among 
them the works which no other man did, they had not had 
sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and 
my Father.” To complete the series, in the closing chapter 
of this Gospel, we have the record of a miraculous draught 
of fishes, which followed our Lord’s resurrection—a coun¬ 
terpart, but with important differences, of an earlier miracle 
recorded by St. Luke, which took place near the com¬ 
mencement of our Lord’s public ministry. 

This Gospel also, in harmony with its later date and 
more reflective character, not merely recounts various mira¬ 
cles, but suggests and unfolds the connection between these 
tokens of our Lord’s divine mission, and the truth of which 
they were the public confirmation and evidence. Thus we 
read in chap, ii, 11, “This beginning of miracles did Jesus 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 

in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and 
his disciples believed on him.” In the same chapter we 
are told once more that “many believed on his name, when 
they saw the miracles which he did.” Nicodemus opens 
his interview with the simple statement—“Rabbi, we know 
that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do 
these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” 
The sluggish faith which craves perpetually for fresh mar¬ 
vels is reproved in the words, “Except ye see signs and 
wonders, ye will not believe.” Yet a sign is given to the 
nobleman by the speedy and sudden cure of his son, and 
“himself believed, and his whole house.” In the discourse 
which follows the cure of the impotent man, our Lord 
assigns his miracles a middle place among the proofs of 
his Divine mission. “I have a witness greater than that 
of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to 
finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me that 
the Father hath sent me.” In the discourse at Capernaum, 
he blames the sordid interest in the outward meal provided, 
instead of their thoughts being fixed on the miracle itself, 
and on the proof which it supplied of his true character. 
“Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because 
ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.” In the narrative 
of the blind man, the same lesson is put into his own lips. 
“Since the world began was it not heard that any man 
opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man 
were not of God, he could do nothing.” In the case of 
Lazarus, the conclusion appears from the lips of the Phar¬ 
isees themselves: “What do we? for this man doeth many 
miracles. If we let him alone, all men will believe on him: 
and the Romans will come and take away both our place 
and nation.” Our Lord’s condemnation of the Jews, be¬ 
cause of the greatness of his own works, has been already 

quoted from his parting discourse before the crucifixion. 

5 


50 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


The apostle himself sums up these brief but instructive 
comments, in his own statement of the scope of his whole 
narrative: “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the 
presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 
But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might 
have life through his name.” 

III. The Book of Acts. 

The book of Acts forms the transition from the long 
series of Bible histories to those of later times, after the 
canon of Scripture was closed, where the supernatural ele¬ 
ment ceases to appear. In time it occupies more than 
thirty years — A. D. 30-63 — and includes the reigns of 
four emperors, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, one 
of whom is mentioned by name. In place it includes 
nearly all the main centers of civilization in the brightest 
days of the Boman empire—Jerusalem, Caesarea, the Syrian 
and Pisidian Antioch, Philippi, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, 
Alexandria, and Borne. It includes also the mention of 
two Jewish kings, and four Boman governors — two of 
Judea, one of Cyprus, and one of Achaia; of the asiarchs 
of Ephesus, the chief man of Melita, and the military 
prefect of Borne; and thus links itself at every turn with 
the most familiar elements of classical and Jewish history. 
Yet the miraculous element continues throughout its whole 
course, and is not less prominent than in the Gospels them¬ 
selves. Let us briefly notice the successive passages. A 
series of simple references, with a few words of occasional 
comment, will perhaps exhibit this feature in the clearest 
way: 

Chap, i, 9-11—The ascension, with the appearance and message of 
two angels. 

Chap, i, 16-21—Fulfillment of prophecy in the death of Judas. 

Chap, ii, 1-12—The miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit, and tho 
gift of tongues. 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 


Chap, ii, 43—Many wonders and signs done by the apostles. 

Chap, iii, 1-11—The healing of the lame man at the gate of the 
Temple. The rest of the chapter is an address founded entirely upon 
this public miracle. 

Chap, iv, 13-18—The confession of the miracle by the Jewish council, 
with their charge to the apostles to speak no more in the name of 
Jesus. 

Chap, iv, 21, 22—“So when they had further threatened them they 
let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them; for all men 
glorified God for that which was done. For the man was above forty 
years old on whom this miracle of healing was shown.” 

Chap, iv, 31—The place is shaken where the disciples were assembled, 
and they are all filled with the Holy Ghost. 

Chap, v, 1-11—The miraculous judgment on Ananias and Sapphira. 

Chap, v, 12—Many wonders and signs done by the hands of the 
apostles. 

Chap, v, 15, 16—The sick are cured by the shadow of Peter passing 
by, and the multitudes resort for healing to Jerusalem. 

Chap, v, 19-26—The apostles are miraculously freed from prison by 
an angel. 

Chap, vi, 8—Stephen works great wonders and miracles among the 
people. 

Chap, vii, 55, 56—A miraculous vision to Stephen before his death. 

Chap, viii, 5-8—Great joy in Samaria from the miraculous cures 
wrought by Philip the Evangelist. 

Chap, viii, 14-19—Gifts of the Spirit bestowed by imposition of the 
apostles’ hands, and money offered by Simon Magus to purchase the 
same power. 

Chap, viii, 26—Philip sent by the message of an angel to meet the 
Ethiopian eunuch. 

Chap, viii, 39, 40—Philip miraculously caught away after the baptism 
of the eunuch, and found at Azotus. 

Chap, ix, 1-9—The conversion of Saul by a miraculous vision. 

Chap, ix, 10-18—The vision of Ananias, an£ miraculous cure of 
Saul’s blindness. 

Chap, ix, 32-35—The cure of Eneas by St. Peter. 36-42—The raising 
of Dorcas from the dead. 

Chap, x, 1-8—The vision of the angel to Cornelius. 9-16—The vision 
to St. Peter. 

Chap, x, 44^48—Miraculous gifts of the Spirit bestowed on Cornelius 
and other Gentiles. 

Chap, xi, 1-18—Rehearsal to the Church of the miraculous conversion 
of Cornelius. 

Chap, xi, 28-30—The prophecy of Agabus fulfilled under Claudius. 


52 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Chap, xii, 1-17—The deliverance of St. Peter from prison by the 
message of an angel. 

Chap, xii, 22, 23—The sudden judgment on Herod ascribed to the 
angel of the Lord. 

Chap, xiii, 6-12 — Blindness miraculously inflicted on Elymas by 
St. Paul. 

Chap, xiv, 3—Signs and wonders done at Iconium by the hands of 
Paul and Barnabas. 

Chap, xiv, 8-18—Cure of the impotent man at Lystra, and Divine 
honor offered to the apostles. 

Chap, xv, 12—Barnabas and Paul report in the council at Jerusalem 
“ what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles 
by them.” 

Chap, xvi, 8-10—St. Paul guided into Europe by a miraculous vi¬ 
sion. 

Chap, xvi, 18—The damsel dispossessed of the spirit of divination. 

Chap, xvi, 25-34—The earthquake at Philippi, the loosing of all the 
prisoners, and the jailer’s conversion. 

Chap, xvii, 31—St. Paul at Athens bears witness to the fact of 
Christ’s resurrection. 

Chap, xviii, 9, 10—St. Paul at Corinth has a miraculous vision and 
message from the Lord. 

Chap, xix, 6—Gifts of the Spirit are bestowed on twelve disciples at 
Ephesus. 

Chap, xix, 11, 12 — Special miracles are wrought by St. Paul at 
Ephesus. 

Chap, xix, 13-17—Yain attempt of Jewish exorcists to copy the 
miracles of the apostle. 

Chap, xx, 7-12—Miraculous recovery of Eutychus. 23—St. Paul 
claims to know by the Holy Ghost the bonds and imprisonment which 
await him. 

Chap, xxi, 9-12—Prophecy of Agabus. 

Chap, xxii, 6-16—St. Paul’s account of his own conversion, (17-21,) 
and his vision in the Temple at Jerusalem. 

Chap, xxiii, 11—A vision to St. Paul, and a prediction of his journey 
to Rome. 

Chap, xxvi, 8-23—St. Paul’s account of his conversion before Agrippa 
and Festus. 

Chap, xxvii, 10—St. Paul’s prediction of the shipwreck, (23-26,) 
angelic vision, and further prophecy. 

Chap, xxviii, 3-6—St. Paul’s miraculous escape from the viper, (7,) 
and cure of Publius’s father, (9, 10,) and many others. 

Chap, xxviii, 25-27—Prophecy of Isaiah fulfilled in the unbelief of 
the Jews. 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 53 


This brief list of references will show how intimate and 
inseparable is the union of the miraculous element with 
the whole course of this apostolic history. From the res¬ 
urrection and ascension in the first verses, to the gifts of 
healing exercised by St. Paul at Melita, after his escape 
from shipwreck, this feature gives its coloring to every 
main event in the narrative. To borrow the phrase of the 
able author of “The Restoration of Belief,” the relation is 
one of intimate cohesion, and not of mere adhesion. Once 
attempt to remove it and “ the vitality ,pf the writer is gone, 
though much that he has recorded might still be true. We 
have slain the man, but if he carried about with him any 
thing that is valuable, we take it to ourselves.” Or rather, 
we may go still further, and say that, when the miraculous 
element is rejected, nothing of real value is left behind. 
The historical fragments that would remain would be too 
few, and too suspicious, to save the bandit’s occupation of 
rifling the dead from being a pure waste of learned labor. 
IV. The Apostolic Epistles. 

When we turn from the historical books of the New 
Testament to the letters of the apostles to individuals, or 
to the Churches they had founded, a marked change occurs 
in the frequency with which any direct mention of miracles 
occurs. The fundamental doctrine, indeed, of the resurrec¬ 
tion of Christ meets us in almost every page, and is the 
constant basis alike of the doctrinal statements of the 
apostles, and of their practical appeals to the conscience. 
Setting this aside, however, out of twenty-one epistles, there 
are only seven in which the topic of miracles is directly 
introduced. In the other fourteen they are passed by in 
total silence, or if there be allusion to them, it is so deli¬ 
cate and unobtrusive as to require the most careful search 
to find any trace of it. Out of a hundred and twenty-one 
chapters, there is only one which contains a formal and 


54 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


distinct statement of the existence and nature of miracu¬ 
lous gifts in the early Churches; and out of nearly three 
thousand verses, there are, besides that one chapter, only 
about twenty scattered up and down which contain distinct 
allusions to the same truth. The fact has been made, by 
the writer just quoted, the ground of a powerful argument, 
to confirm the honesty, the moral uprightness of aim, the 
practical soundness of judgment, remote from all false or 
blind enthusiasm, of the apostolic writers. It is doubly 
striking, when we observe that the Churches where St. 
Paul’s authority was most fully allowed, and in which he 
placed the most confidence, are the same with whom this 
topic is omitted; and that he appeals to it only in those 
cases, like the Churches of G-alatia and of Corinth, where 
he had to administer strong rebuke, or where his authority 
was encountered by some evil influence. The prominence, 
then, of the moral element in the Epistles, and the compara¬ 
tive fewness of their direct allusions to miracles, form a 
striking pledge of the uprightness, veracity, and practical 
wisdom of the apostles of Christ. 

But when we view the subject from the opposite side, it 
will be clear that the assertion of a miraculous element in 
the Gospel, whether directly made, or indirectly implied, 
runs throughout the Epistles, no less than the historical 
books of the New Testament. Let us review them briefly 
in the probable order of time. The contrast of supernatural 
and non-supernatural epistles refers only to the explicit 
character of allusions to present miraculous powers exer¬ 
cised by the apostles themselves. But with regard to 
Christianity itself, the direct assertion or indirect assump¬ 
tion of its supernatural evidence and authority is common 
to every one of these writings, without a single exception. 

The two Epistles to the Thessalonians hold the first place 
in order of time. They are earnest and warm outpourings 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 55 


of the apostle’s heart to young converts in a time of severe 
persecution. No direct assertion of his own miraculous 
gifts is therefore found in them. They are reminded, how¬ 
ever, that the Gospel came to them “not in word only, but 
also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much as¬ 
surance which, when compared with the history, contains 
a scarcely-doubtful allusion to the duva/ieK;, or miraculous 
gifts of the Spirit, which accompanied his preaching. 
They are reminded that their new hope was “to wait for 
his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead,” a 
passing affirmation of the crowning miracle of the Gospel 
history. The apostle associates himself and his fellows 
with the prophets of the Old Testament, and with the Lord 
Jesus himself, under the common character of messengers 
from God, whom the Jews had persecuted because of their 
messages. He speaks to them—1 Thess. iv, 1—as one en¬ 
dued with a Divine authority, and announces to them the 
order and circumstances of the resurrection, with the sig¬ 
nificant preface, “This we say unto you by the word of the 
Lord.” The double charge, “Quench not the Spirit, de¬ 
spise not prophesyings,” when collated with other epistles, 
includes evidently an allusion to miraculous gifts. In the 
second Epistle even this indirect allusion is not found. 
Still, the first chapter is a warning of judgment, ready to 
light on those “who obey not the Gospel,” which clearly 
implies its authority as a direct message from heaven; and 
the second contains a further warning of a strong delusion, 
with signs and wonders of falsehood, to which those would 
be abandoned who had rejected the truth of God. No 
stronger assertion could be made, by mere implication, that 
true signs and wonders had been notoriously given to at¬ 
test the truth of the Gospel. 

The Epistle to the Galatians, unlike the two earlier ones 
to Thessalonica, is a polemic against Judaizing teachers. 


56 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


with strong rebuke of the Churches addressed for their 
fickleness and inconstancy in the faith. The authority of 
the apostle was questioned or denied, and he begins his 
letter by asserting it in the plainest terms. He calls him¬ 
self “Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by 
Jesus Christ, and Giod the Father, who raised him from 
the dead.” His reference to miracles, accordingly, becomes 
distinct, repeated, and earnest. He appeals, first of all, to 
the notorious fact of his own miraculous and sudden con¬ 
version, giving no details of the vision, it is true; but still 
with the plainest reference to the supernatural character of 
the revelation. Then, in the midst of the keenest censure 
and rebuke, he reminds the Galatians of gifts of the Spirit 
they had themselves received, and follows it by a reference 
to his own apostolic credentials. “He that ministered to 
you the Spirit, and wrought miracles among you, was it by 
the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” 

The Epistles to the Corinthians are addressed to a 
Church where the apostle had much to blame, and where 
his own authority had been depreciated and opposed. But 
instead of avoiding, on this account, all reference to mira¬ 
cles, the allusions to them are unusually full and various. 
He begins by reminding them that they come behind in 
no spiritual gift by which the testimony respecting Christ 
had been visibly confirmed among them. He appeals to 
the notorious fact of his own miraculous conversion. “Am 
I not an apostle? have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord?” 
He occupies a whole chapter with a statement of the spir¬ 
itual gifts, some directly miraculous, others more purely 
spiritual, which were in exercise among them; and he gives 
the palm of excellence, not to those which were most 
startling to the outward senses, but to those which referred 
to the minds and hearts of Christians, and, above all, to 
the crowning grace of charity or love. He resumes the 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 

subject in another chapter, and gives rules, with Divine 
authority, for the mode in which these wonderful gifts were 
to be exercised. Hd describes, in passing, their probable 
effect upon strangers who might be present in their assem¬ 
blies. “And thus are the secrets of his heart made mani¬ 
fest ; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, 
and report that God is in you of a truth.” 1 Cor. xiv, 25. 
Amidst this clear recognition of their miraculous endow¬ 
ments, he firmly claims for himself a superior degree of them, 
and a Divine authority which it was their plain duty to 
allow. “I thank my God I speak with tongues more than 
you all.” “If any man account himself to be a prophet, or 
spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto 
you are the commandments of the Lord.” Verses 18, 37. 
He refers to five distinct appearances of the Lord after his 
resurrection as to notorious facts, which needed no proof or 
comment, and closes with a striking reference to the vision 
he himself had received. “Last of all he was seen of me 
also, as of one born out of due time.” With a calm and 
unaltered tone he turns from description of the most 
striking miracles to a course of earnest reasoning on the 
doctrine of the resurrection, and from this returns to mi¬ 
nute details with regard to collections for the poor, and the 
arrangement of his own journeys. 

In the second letter, after the tidings of their repentance 
had reached him, three-fourths are without any clear allu¬ 
sion-to miraculous gifts, and are occupied only with a rich 
variety of moral lessons and exhortations, based on the 
doctrinal truths of the Gospel. But toward the close the 
mention of those gifts recurs in various forms. “I suppose 
I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.” “I 
will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.” “In 
nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I 
be nothing. Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought 


58 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and 
mighty deeds.” “If I come again I will not spare, since 
ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me.” “I write these 
things, being absent, lest being present I should use sharp¬ 
ness, according to the power which the Lord hath given 
me, to edification, and not to destruction.” Words could 
not more plainly express a claim to authority, received di¬ 
rectly from the Lord himself, and ratified by miraculous 
powers, which had been exercised already in the midst of 
the Corinthian converts. 

The Epistle to the Romans is occupied throughout with 
a full statement of Christian doctrine, and of the practical 
lessons based upon it. Nine-tenths of it are complete be¬ 
fore there is any distinct allusion whatever to miraculous 
attestations of the Gospel. But at the close it appears, 
though briefly, in the most decisive form. “I will not 
dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not 
wrought by me, to make the Gentiles Obedient, by word 
and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power 
of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round 
about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of 
Christ.” The assertion is doubly striking, from its associa¬ 
tion with this precise geographical limit, and the mention 
of a province named no where else in Scripture, so as to 
bring out the strictly historical character of the statement 
into full and bold relief. 

The Epistles from Rome during the first imprisonment, 
are addressed to prosperous Churches, and contain praise 
and encouragement, rather than rebuke. Accordingly they 
have only the slightest and most general allusions to Chris¬ 
tian miracles. Traces of them, however, do appear. The 
Ephesians, after they believed, had been “sealed with the 
Holy Spirit of promise.” The mystery of the Gospel had 
been made known to St. Paul “ by revelation,” and was 


THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 59 


revealed unto all the “holy apostles and prophets by the 
Spirit.” The Lord, when he ascended on high, “gave gifts 
unto men,” and foremost among these the endowments of 
apostles and prophets, where even the second and lower 
title implies a supernatural claim. In the Pastoral Epistles 
similar allusions are found. The Spirit had spoken ex¬ 
pressly of a great departure from the faith. 1 Tim. iv, 1. 
Timothy is charged not to neglect the gift that was in him, 
and given by prophecy, meaning, apparently, by the voice 
of some inspired prophet, before or at the time of his first 
public separation for the work of God. He is charged, 
again, to stir up the gift of God, received by imposition of 
the hands of the apostles, a spirit of power, as well as of 
love. The allusion to Jannes and Jambres compared with 
Acts xiii, 7, 8; xv, 12, seems also to imply that signs and 
wonders like those of Moses accompanied the preaching of 
the Gospel. The statements in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
on the other hand, where rebuke and censure are needed, 
become explicit and full once more. “How shall we escape, 
if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began 
to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by them 
that heard him; God also bearing them witness, with signs 
and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy 
Ghost according to his own will?” “It is impossible for 
those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the good 
word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they 
shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance.” “He 
that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or 
three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment shall he be 
thought worthy who hath done despite to the Spirit of 
grace?” Heb. ii, 3—5; vi, 4; x, 28. 

It is needless to pursue the inquiry further. The claim 
to a miraculous and supernatural character, on the part of 
our Lord and his apostles, runs clearly through the whole 


60 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, 


of the New Testament, and coheres inseparably with its 
historical narrative, its doctrinal teaching, and practical ex¬ 
hortations. It appears conspicuous in the whole course of 
the four Gospels, from the birth of our Lord to his resur¬ 
rection and ascension into heaven. It continues, with the 
same frequency and fullness, throughout the apostolic his¬ 
tory, from the hour of the ascension to the voyage and 
shipwreck of the apostle of the Gentiles, and "his arrival at 
the metropolis of the Gentile world. In the Epistles it is 
present throughout, but usually as a latent assumption, 
which needed no express and direct statement. But in pro¬ 
portion as the authority of the apostle is resisted, or sinful 
practices have to be rebuked, or doctrinal declensions ex¬ 
posed, the claim reappears; and it is made most strongly 
in those very cases where the assertion would be evident 
madness, if it were not undeniably true. It is a weapon 
sheathed in the presence of friends, but drawn from its 
scabbard whenever vice has to be rebuked, error resisted, 
or doubts of the apostle’s authority reduced to silence. 

The result of this review must be plain. A supernatural 
claim is of the essence of Christianity. Whenever this is 
rejected, the nature of the message is changed; the heart 
is torn out from it, and its life expires. It ceases to be 
the Word of God, and acquires, by fatal necessity, the very 
opposite character. It becomes a system of human fraud 
and imposture, or a strange, inexplicable mass of lunacy 
and mental derangement. Our Lord and his apostles must 
either have been messengers with a direct commission from 
God, or else they can have no title to retain the character 
even of honest, upright, and reasonable men. They must 
either be condemned to an asylum, or else obeyed with 
reverence, because they are seen to be clothed with super¬ 
natural and Divine authority. 


i 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


61 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 

The prophets of the Old Testament, and the apostles of 
the New, and One greater than both—the Lord Jesus 
Christ himself, agree in appealing to miracles to prove 
themselves teachers and messengers sent from God. The 
commission of Moses, as recorded in the law, began with 
a formal statement of this principle of Divine revelation. 
“It shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, nor 
hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe 
the voice of the latter sign;” The rejection of this evidence 
is declared to be the reason why an unbelieving generation 
were shut out from the land of promise. “Because all those 
men which have seen my glory, and my miracles which I 
did in Egypt and in the wilderness, have tempted me now 
these ten times and not hearkened to my voice; surely they 
shall not see the land which I swore unto their fathers.” 
The language of our Lord in the Gospels is exactly the 
same: “Woe unto thee, Chorazin; woe unto thee, Beth- 
saida; for if the mighty works which were done in you, 
had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have re¬ 
pented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall* be 
more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment 
than for you.” The lesson taught in these direct and 
solemn warnings to the cities of Galilee is repeated in his 
secret instructions to his own disciples on the eve of his 
departure. “If I had not done among them the works 
which no other man did, they had not had sin; but now 


62 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


liave they both seen and hated both me and my father.” 
So also St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, appealing to the 
same proof of Divine authority. “ Truly the signs of an 
apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, 
and wonders, and mighty deeds.” In another epistle the 
same truth appears once more in its aspect of solemn warn¬ 
ing. “ For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast— 
how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which 
at the first began to be spoken by our Lord, and was con¬ 
firmed to us by those that heard him; God also bearing 
them witness, with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles; 
and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” 

This view of miracles, as the proper and reasonable tests 
of a Divine message, though affirmed by prophets and 
apostles, and our Lord himself, and consequently received 
by all the advocates of Christian faith, both in ancient and 
modern times, has been recently questioned or contradicted 
by some who have not openly renounced the Christian 
name. They allege that the progress of science has intro¬ 
duced insuperable difficulties into the admission of any 
suspense or reversal of the laws of Nature.* Miracles, in 
their opinion, are no longer the evidence, but rather the 
stumbling-blocks and incumbrances of a professed revela¬ 
tion.*}* The faculty of faith has now turned inward, and 
can not accept any outer manifestations of the truth of 
God.| Narratives inherently incredible can not change 
their nature, or become credible, by the supposition that 
they fulfill some religious purpose.g The region of phys¬ 
ical change, then, must be given up to the unbroken and 
undisturbed dominion of natural laws; and our faith in spir¬ 
itual truth must rest on moral grounds, or acts of pure 
reason, without the least dependence on external testimony. 

* Essays and Reviews, Essay iii, p. 104. f P. 140. 

I Essay i, p. 24. § Essay ii, p. 83. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


63 


It has thus become needful to examine whether these mod¬ 
ern Christians, by means of their superior attainments in 
physical science, and metaphysical speculation, have really 
been able to convict their Lord and his apostles of direct 
falsehood or grievous folly, in that appeal to the evidence 
of miracles, as conclusive tests of a Divine mission, which 
they have plainly and repeatedly made,- 

The objections which have been lately urged against the 
usual view of the Christian evidence are of three kinds. 
They relate, first, to the temper, style, and tone of the 
advocates of Christianity; secondly, to the credibility of 
miracles in themselves; and, thirdly, to their suitableness 
and sufficiency, as proofs and tests of a Divine revelation. 
Objections of the first kind are preliminary, but still de¬ 
serve some notice and reply. The others enter into the 
heart of the whole subject, and involve the whole contro¬ 
versy between Christian faith and a spirit of utter and 
hopeless disbelief. I will examine each of them in order. 

I. The tendency of objections of the first class is to pre¬ 
judge the whole subject, by creating an impression of 
habitual unfairness and insincerity, or of secret doubt, on 
the part of the defenders of Christianity. Their usual 
tone, we are informed, is that of “the special partisan and 
ingenious advocate,” and not of the unbiased judge, It 
is one of polemical acrimony, and settled and inveterate 
prejudice. There is a disposition to triumph in lesser 
details, rather than to grasp comprehensive principles. 
While infidel objections may have been urged in an offen¬ 
sive manner, there is often, in Christian writers, a want of 
sympathy with difficulties which many inquirers seriously 
feel in admitting the evidences of the G-ospel. An appeal 
to argument implies perfect freedom to receive or reject the 
conclusion. It is absurd to reason with men, and anath¬ 
ematize them if not convinced by the reasoning, to make 


64 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


honest doubts a proof of moral obliquity, and denounce 
men as skeptics because they are careful to discriminate 
truth from error. The distinction between questions of 
external fact and of moral truth has been extensively over¬ 
looked and kept out of sight. Advocates of historical evi¬ 
dence inconsistently make their appeal to conscience and 
feeling; while upholders of faith and moral conviction, with 
equal inconsistency, regard the external facts of revelation 
as not less essential truth, which it would be profane to 
question.* 

It is alleged further, that it is the common language 
of orthodox writings to advise men not to seek for precise- 
answers to objections and difficulties, but to regard the 
whole subject as one which ought to be exempt from scru¬ 
tiny, and received with silent submission. Their frequent 
reply is, that we are not to expect demonstrative evidence, 
that we must be content with probabilities, that exact criti¬ 
cism is always sure to rake up difficulties, that cavilers 
find new objections when the first are refuted, and reason 
can not be convinced unless the conscience and will are 
disposed to accept the truth. Thus the inquiry is removed 
from the ground of truth and honesty to one of practical 
expedience; objections are treated as profane, and excep¬ 
tions dismissed, as shocking and immoral, without an 
answer, f 

Now, it can not be doubted that on this subject, just as 
in many others of inferior moment, the zealotry of un¬ 
scrupulous partisans, bent only on silencing an opponent, 
or gaining a cheap reputation for orthodoxy and contro¬ 
versial ability, may sometimes counterfeit the earnestness 
of a genuine faith. The description, however, when applied 
generally to the modern advocates of Christianity, is a se- 


* Essays and Reviews, Essay iii, pp. 95-98. f Essay iii, pp. 96-100. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 65 

rious calumny. The arrogance which partially disfigures 
the writings of a Bentley or a Warburton is the exception, 
and not the rule. An opposite charge may be made with 
more truth against Paley and other apologists of the last 
century. Their treatment of an inquiry so vital to the high¬ 
est interests of men, however clear, is, perhaps, too cold 
and passionless. Though mere earnestness is a bad sub¬ 
stitute for strict reasoning, yet on a subject which involves 
the welfare of souls and issues of eternal life and death, we 
can not be reasonable unless we are earnest—so earnest as 
to shock the taste of mere intellectual theorists, and dis¬ 
turb the deathlike placidity of their speculations. The 
tone of calm, cold, abstract philosophizing, which the ob¬ 
jection seems to prescribe to such discussions, has no sanc¬ 
tion in the practice of the apostles. Their maxim was 
widely different—“Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the 
Lord, we persuade men.” St. Paul, it is clear, had not 
made the modern discovery that it is absurd to appeal to 
men’s reason, and still to warn them of their guilt and 
danger, when they refuse to yield to the force of evidence, 
and thus reject the message of the Gospel. His own prac¬ 
tice was based on the opposite maxim, that in proportion 
to the strength of the reasons which prove the reality of a 
Divine message, must be the guilt of those who, under any 
pretext whatever, set aside its authority and reject its 
claims. 

It is no doubt a serious fault, and a great stumbling- 
block to inquirers, when professed champions of revealed 
religion betray the tone of unscrupulous advocates, who are 
contending for victory alone. But it is no less unseemly, 
either for the inquirer or the believer, to affect the char¬ 
acter of an unbiased judge. Such a pretension betrays in 
itself a bias of the worst kind, because it involves a plain 

denial of one of the simplest truths of the Gospel. Ohris- 

6 


66 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


tianity does not appeal to us as a culprit, to be cleared 
from a charge of imposture and mendicancy before the 
tribunal of our superior wisdom. We have to plead at the 
bar of Christ, not Christ at ours. He appeals to our 
reason; but from above, not from beneath; as a judge, a 
physician, a father pleads with a culprit, a patient, or a 
child. For any of these parties to claim the character of 
an unbiased judge, because their obedience requires some 
exercise of judgment on their own part, would be a ridicu¬ 
lous affectation. If the Gospel be true, no one to whom it 
is fully made known can reject it, unless from the strong 
bias of “an evil heart of unbelief;” and no one truly re¬ 
ceives it unless by the expulsive power of a new affection. 
They must have yielded to an influence still more powerful 
than sensual appetite or the pride of false reason—the 
mighty attraction of the Cross, and the constraining power 
of the love of Christ. 

An appeal to argument implies a natural capacity in 
those to whom it is made to apprehend the force of sound 
reasoning. But it does not imply a state of entire equi¬ 
librium and strict moral indifference. It would then have 
to be confined to some distant world, and could have no 
place in our intercourse with sinful men. Even among 
philosophers and metaphysicians, since their speculations 
began, there has never been a case of pure, abstract, color¬ 
less indifference to the truth or falsehood of Christianity. 
The words of Christ make no exception either for skeptics, 
philosophers, or divines. “He that is not for me is against 
me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” 
Neutrality here is strictly impossible. It is quite con¬ 
sistent and reasonable, then, to set before the inquirer or 
the unbeliever the evidences of the Christian revelation; 
and still, when these are rejected after their full exhibition, 
to ascribe that rejection to a moral obliquity, possibly quite 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 67 

unsuspected by themselves, and thus to refuse the flattering 
title of honest doubt to their culpable unbelief. This im¬ 
plies, it is true, that the skeptic, in many cases, is “no 
judge of his own mind;” but it does not imply, on the 
part of the Christian advocate, any claim to omniscience 
and infallibility. It simply proves that he has more faith 
in the true sayings of Christ than in the self-knowledge 
of those who reject the messages of their Maker, and 
flatter themselves that the only reason is their scrupulous 
care to avoid imposture and delusion. The disclaimer of 
all moral bias by the skeptic who refuses to own the 
authority of Christ, however sincerely made, is only. one 
ingredient in his unbelief. The Christian advocate who 
admits the claim, in order to acquire a reputation for 
superior candor, only shares in the guilt, since he dis¬ 
owns a truth which is clearly revealed in the Word of 
God. 

A second charge brought against many advocates of 
Christianity is a neglect of the wide distinction between 
questions of external fact, and of internal, moral, and re¬ 
ligious truth. They digress irregularly, it is said, from 
one subject into the other. They mingle a moral element 
with their treatment of the evidence for the facts of Chris¬ 
tianity; or when they urge the moral claims of the Christian 
faith, they include in their view of it the historical facts 
of the creed along with ideas of the pure reason* The 
fact must be allowed that such a union and interchange 
of topics does continually occur. But the question re¬ 
mains whether it is the advocates of Christian faith or 
their critic and censor who betrays a grievous blindness to 
the lessons of daily experience, of sound philosophy, and 
of Christian truth. 


* Essays and Reviews, Essay iii, pp. 97, 98. 



68 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Let us begin with the simple analogy which is suggested 
by the very form of the objection. The Christian religion 
has external facts and internal principles; it has a body 
and a soul. Is it a great error to treat them as if joined 
together in closest union? Christianity must be slain before 
we can turn it into a disembodied spirit. Is it a fault in 
the psychologist who treats of the human mind to spend 
chapters on the five senses—on touch, and taste, and hear¬ 
ing, sight, and smell—all of which involve a direct refer¬ 
ence to the body, and are inseparable from it? Is it a 
fault in the physician who prescribes for a dangerous fever 
to direct that the mind of the patient should be kept free, 
if possible, from causes of excitement that would aggravate 
the disease, and make it more dangerous? Is it confusion 
of thought when a treatise on the preservation of bodily 
health is connected with moral lessons on the benefit of 
chastity and temperance? Or is it a culpable irregularity 
when the connection is traced, either by the physician or 
the moralist, between the indulgence of vice and exposure 
to fatal disease? If not, then analogy alone refutes the 
objection so hastily and superficially brought against the 
advocates of revelation. 

Let us examine the subject, next, by the light of reason. 
Is it unreasonable to introduce a moral element at all in 
discussing the external evidences of Christianity? To jus¬ 
tify this view, three assumptions must be made: that there 
are no moral obstacles to be overcome in those to whom 
these evidences are addressed; that no moral feature enters 
into the miracles of Christ and his apostles, or into the 
predictions of the Bible, and adds immensely to their force 
as evidence; and, finally, that there is no moral aim in the 
message itself, to which the outward evidence is entirely 
subordinate. Unless all these assumptions were true, the 
objection is clearly baseless and unreasonable. But every 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


69 


one of them is exactly the reverse of the truth. The only 
wonder is how any one with the lowest pretensions to the 
faculty of reasoning could impute a fault to a number of 
able and thoughtful writers, which implies his own igno¬ 
rance or neglect of the simplest analogies of daily life, and 
of the most prominent feature in the miracles of the Gospel. 

There is still a third, and a higher test, which may be 
applied to this strange censure of so many Christian writers, 
because they have yielded to a clear necessity of common- 
sense and sound reason. We may appeal to an authority 
which all Christians are bound to revere. How did Christ 
and his apostles treat the external evidences and the moral 
elements of the message they delivered to mankind? Did 
they part them from each other by a wall of separation? 
Did they jealously avoid any mixture of a moral 'element 
in their statement of the outward facts of the Gospel, or 
any mention of the outward facts in their moral appeal 
to the conscience? Plainly and notoriously, their conduct 
was just the reverse. Far from being at pains to separate 
these two elements, as the objection prescribes, they labor 
to unite them closely together. Their intermarriage is a 
feature conspicuous on almost every page both of the Old 
and New Testament. There is scarcely a fact announced, 
but some great moral truth beams out from beneath it, and 
lights it up with a deeper significance. There is scarcely 
a precept or a promise, a doctrinal statement, or an utter¬ 
ance of devotion, but some historical allusion is mingled 
with it, so as to give it a firmer hold on the affections, and 
translate it from a mere abstraction into a living reality of 
Divine Providence. The Sermon on the Mount, for ex¬ 
ample, abounds in every part with distinct and specific his¬ 
torical allusions. Its usual title is borrowed from the place 
where it was uttered, a mountain in Galilee. It was ad¬ 
dressed to the disciples, and to multitudes “from Judea, 


70 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Decapolis, and Tyre, and Sidon.” It refers to all the per¬ 
secutions of the prophets under the Old Testament, to the 
giving of the law by Moses, and a variety of precepts, 
therein contained, to the daily facts of providence, the 
sunshine and the rain from heaven, to the tax-gatherers 
of Palestine, to the long and pretentious prayers of the 
Pharisees, to the birds of heaven, and the lilies of the 
field, to the natural habits of the dogs and the swine, to 
the whole range of earlier revelations in the law and the 
prophets, to the number of the unbelieving and profane, 
and the fewness of the faithful, to trees and their fruits, 
to outward miracles wrought by false disciples, to the 
wonder of the people at our Lord’s teaching, and its con¬ 
trast with the teaching of the Jewish scribes. All these 
are external elements, united inseparably with one of the 
purest and simplest exhibitions of moral and spiritual truth. 

The union, then, of external facts with moral elements, 
in writing on the Christian evidences, is justified by the 
clearest analogies, by sound reason, and by examples which 
every Christian is bound to revere. The only ground of 
surprise is how any one, claiming the character of a phi¬ 
losopher or a Christian, can make a charge against the 
judgment of others which implies his own equal rejection 
of the plainest lessons of natural reason and of Christian 
faith. 

The objection brought against many advocates of revela¬ 
tion, that they counsel an evasion of difficulties rather than 
an attempt at their solution, and a willingness to rest on 
probable evidence alone, with a certain submissiveness of 
the conscience and will, is less easy to answer; and there 
are cases in which it has a foundation in justice and truth. 
It is clear that, in subjects of this kind, a willingness to be 
taught, and the absence of a settled purpose to find excuses 
for unbelief, is a moral prerequisite for the acceptance of 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 71 

the message of the Gospel. It is also certain that where 
strict demonstration is not attainable, we are hound to act 
upon mere probability; and that whenever there is a desire 
to multiply difficulties, occasions for cavil and objection 
will never cease to be found. They are like the heads of 
the fabled hydra, and when one is cut off, a dozen more 
will appear in its stead. But still it can not he denied that 
some professed antidotes of skepticism are not unlikely to 
aggravate the disease they seek to cure, by seeming to 
transfer their advocacy of revelation from the ground of 
definite and intelligible reason to a vague, undefined, relig¬ 
ious sentiment. Men are urged to believe, simply because 
unbelief leaves a painful vacuum in the heart; with a faith 
arising from no calm conviction of the judgment, hut from 
a mere effort and determination of the will. A faith so 
produced can scarcely he genuine. It does not meet diffi¬ 
culties in the face, but merely shuts its eyes, and endeavors 
not to see them. The effect of such a tone, in the advo¬ 
cates of Christianity, on the minds of thoughtful, but per¬ 
plexed inquirers, can hardly fail to be pernicious. Advice 
to cast off skeptical doubts and suggestions by a mere ef¬ 
fort of will may sometimes only aggravate the disease 
which it attempts to cure. 

On the other hand, no sounder advice can be given to 
those whose faith is unfixed, but who profess a sincere de¬ 
sire after religious truth, than to fix their thoughts, first of 
all, on the direct and central evidences of Christianity. 
They do well to delay any attempt at solving particular 
difficulties, or settling knotty questions as to the correct¬ 
ness of the Scripture canon, the mode and degree of inspi¬ 
ration, the seeming discrepancies of the Gospels, or the pro¬ 
priety of New Testament quotations; till they have come 
to a clear and firm decision on the main subject, whether 
Christ is indeed a teacher come from God, and the Bible, 


72 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


at least in substance, a true record of real messages from 
the God of heaven. There is no difficulty in detail for 
which the humble and thoughtful Christian may not ex¬ 
pect to find a solution, partly even in this life, and wholly 
in the life to come. But in the pursuit of Divine knowl¬ 
edge, just as in natural science, there is an order and dis¬ 
cipline which must be observed, and the neglect of which 
will be punished with total failure. The student would 
vainly strive to master the Principia of Newton, or the Me- 
canique Celeste, who has not first stooped to learn Euclid 
and the Elements of the Differential Calculus. Even when 
these elements have been mastered, the ascent must be 
gradual, or real knowledge will elude the grasp, and the 
demonstrations that bring delight and conviction to the 
well-prepared student, become a heap of incomprehensible 
verbiage to those who strive to enter into their meaning 
without submitting to the needful preparation. The case 
of Christian inquirers is exactly similar. A humble and 
patient spirit brings the key which will unlock, by de¬ 
grees, a thousand mysteries, and solve a thousand enigmas 
in the Word of God, or in the course of providence. But 
pride and impatience are like a picklock, and the wards 
are so constructed by Divine art as to resist and defeat all 
unlawful violence. Even those who bring the key with 
them must often be content to wait; and the solution of 
each particular doubt or difficulty may depend on the pre¬ 
vious solution of others, which come earlier in the pathway 
of truth. The ways of heavenly wisdom “are all plain to 
him that understandeth, and right unto them that find 
knowledge.” But, however obnoxious the truth may be to 
the pride of philosophy, without a moral preparation, with¬ 
out a humble and teachable spirit, mere intellectual clever¬ 
ness is here of little avail. The death-knell of its pre¬ 
sumptuous hopes may be heard in that solemn utterance 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


73 


of the Son of God: “ I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from 
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. 
Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” 

From these preliminary objections let us turn to the two 
main topics, which have been involved in no little mist— 
the credibility of miracles in themselves, and their suf¬ 
ficiency and limits as real proofs and tests of a Divine 
revelation. 

II. The difficulties respecting miracles in general, or sus¬ 
pensions of natural law, have assumed, it is said, a much 
deeper importance in our own time. The credibility of 
alleged events, and the value of testimony, must be esti¬ 
mated by a reference to the fixed laws of belief, and our 
convictions of established order and analogy. In appre¬ 
ciating the evidence for any events of a wonderful kind, 
our prepossessions have an enormous influence. We look 
at them through the medium of our prejudices. The more 
remarkable any occurrence, the more unprepared we are to 
view it calmly. Disbelief of an event by no means implies 
a denial of the honesty or veracity of the impression on 
the minds of its witnesses. It means merely that the prob¬ 
ability of some mistake, somewhere, is greater than that of 
the event happening in the way or from the causes assigned. 
What is alleged is a case of the supernatural; and on testi¬ 
mony reaches to the supernatural, but only to apparent 
sensible facts. That these are due to supernatural causes 
depends on the previous belief or assumption of the parties 
who observe them. If any strange, unaccountable fact were 
observed at the present day, an unbiased, educated person 
would not doubt for a moment, if a physical student, that 
it was due to some natural cause, and might at some fu¬ 
ture time be explained by the advance of discovery. Mira¬ 
cles therefore, are now discredited, and have become really 


74 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


incredible. This result has arisen from growing study of 
the phenomena of the natural world. The inductive philos¬ 
ophy is based on one grand truth, the universal 'order and 
constancy of natural causes. This is a primary law of 
belief, so firmly fixed in the mind of every truly-inductive 
inquirer, that he can not even conceive the possibility of 
its failure. An opposite view can arise only from want of 
power to grasp the positive scientific idea of the order of 
nature. Its boundaries exist only where our present knowl¬ 
edge places them; to-morrow’s discoveries will enlarge 
them.- The progress of research will unravel what seems 
now most marvelous, and what is now least understood will 
hereafter be familiarly known. 

“A miracle,” it is continued, “means something at va¬ 
riance with nature and law. There is no analogy between 
it and a mere unknown phenomenon, or an exceptional case 
of a known law included in a larger, still unknown. Arbi¬ 
trary interposition is wholly different in kind. Imagined 
suspensions of the vast series of dependent causation are 
now inconceivable, from our enlarged critical and inductive 
study of the natural world. These are the principles we 
should apply to marvelous events in common history and 
at the present day. But the attempt to claim an excep¬ 
tional character for the Gospel records forfeits or tampers 
with their historical reality. Those who would shield them 
from the criticism, to which all history and fact are amen¬ 
able, force upon us the alternative of a mythical interpret¬ 
ation.” 

An appeal here to the Divine Omnipotence, it is said, is 
out of place. “That doctrine is an inference from the lan¬ 
guage of the Bible, and is founded on the assumption of 
our belief in revelation. And besides, it admits of being 
applied in an opposite way. Our ideas of Divine perfection 
tend to discredit the notion of occasional interference. It 


THE REASONABLENESS OE MIRACLES. 


75 


is derogatory to infinite power and wisdom to suppose an 
order of things so imperfect that it must be interrupted 
and violated to provide for the emergency of a revelation. 
All such reasonings, if pushed to their limits, must lead to 
a denial of all active operation of the Deity, as inconsist¬ 
ent with unchangeable and infinite perfection.” * 

Such is the philosophical objection against the miracles 
of the Law and the Gospel in its more recent and popular 
form. In the eyes of the thoughtful Christian, it lies open 
at once to a prima facie suspicion of entire falsehood, of 
the most formidable and decisive kind. It agrees punctu¬ 
ally with an apostle’s definition, eighteen centuries ago, of 
the form of presumptuous unbelief that would mark the 
last days of the Church of Christ, and ripen scoffers for 
the severest strokes of Divine judgment. He even requires 
us to place this truth very early in our list of Christian 
lessons, to be treasured up for our own guidance. “Know¬ 
ing this first, that there will come in the last days, scoffers, 
walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the 
promise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all 
things continue as they were from the beginning of the 
creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by 
the Word of God the heavens were of old.” The theory, 
as thus described to us long ago, has by no means an 
attractive genealogy. It is born, according to the apostle, 
from willful ignorance of the Creator; its twin children are 
sensuality and scoffing; and its final issue is a solemn and 
terrible judgment. 

Let us inquire, however, apart from the testimony of 
apostles, what claim this doctrine has to be received on the 
ground of philosophy alone. It is made up of mere as¬ 
sumptions, and even self-contradictions, of the most unphil- 


* Essays and Reviews, Essay iii, pp. 107-114. 



76 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

osophical kind. It involves a false view of induction, a 
false conception of the order of nature and the constancy 
of its laws, a false definition of miracles, and a denial of 
special features which plainly attach to every real or sup¬ 
posed message of religious truth, immediately conveyed 
from Grod to man. 

First, the view of induction which this objection implies 
is unphilosophical and untrue. Inductive research and 
mathematical deduction are different, and even contrasted, 
both in their processes and results. The deduction of 
pure science is the development of truths, or results of a 
hypothesis, which are necessarily true, or the contrary of 
which involves a self-contradiction. Such are the truths 
that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
angles, or the rectangles of the segments of intersecting 
chords equal, or that every prime number of the form 
4n-|-l is the sum of two squares. But induction ascends 
from observed facts to generalizations of fact, or actual 
laws. It includes three stages: the accumulation of ob¬ 
served phenomena; the development of some hypothesis for 
their explanation; and the correction or confirmation of the 
hypothesis, by collating its results with the whole series of 
observations. The middle step is here borrowed from pure 
or deductive reasoning. But the two others are of an op¬ 
posite kind. The observations are known to he true, sim¬ 
ply by testimony, or the evidence of our senses, and con¬ 
trary or different facts are equally conceivable. The'law 
obtained, being merely the sum and integration of the 
separate phenomena, shares in the same character. It is 
true, hut not necessary. We believe it on the joint evi¬ 
dence of testimony to certain facts, and of deductive rea¬ 
soning from a proposed hypothesis; hut the result can not 
rise higher in certainty than the weaker of its two compo¬ 
nents. It is credible on the ground of repeated or multi- 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 77 

plied testimonies to the facts which agree with it. But the 
deviation of other facts from it is equally conceivable, 
equally credible upon due evidence, and our faith in the 
law would receive at once a new limitation. In short, all 
such laws are provisional, not necessary truths, a summa¬ 
tion of facts which might have been- different. We can 
easily believe, on credible testimony, of their apparent sus¬ 
pension or reversal, in particular cases, either by the inter¬ 
section of some higher law, or by some directly spiritual 
and supernatural agency. We can even conceive, without 
much difficulty, of their total replacement by other laws 
entirely different. 

It is thus a wholly false view of the nature of inductive 
science that it is occupied with the investigation and dis¬ 
covery of laws which are necessary and unalterable. The 
exact reverse is the truth. Deductive science alone is 
occupied with the development of necessary truth; but 
applied or inductive science deals with phenomena, and 
through these with laws, of which the essential feature 
is that they are not necessary, however real, and that they 
repose on the basis of multiplied testimonies; so that devi¬ 
ations from them, and even their reversal, are quite con¬ 
ceivable, and would demand our faith, if sustained by due 
evidence, on the very same principle on which the laws 
themselves are believed to exist. 

Again, the objection involves a total misconception of 
the order of nature and the constancy of natural laws. It 
is true that the progress of physical science enables us, 
in these days, to refer many phenomena to some law or 
property of matter which were once inexplicable. We can 
not doubt, also, that further advances in the same direction 
will still be made. Other laws, hardly less wide than that 
of gravitation, may be discovered; and many things now 
mysterious, like the phenomena of comets, and the subtile 


78 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and delicate movements of light and electricity, will be 
more clearly understood, and enlarge greatly the field 
of human knowledge. But this movement, by which the 
horizon of science perpetually recedes and enlarges, instead 
of proving the inflexible constancy of natural laws, in the 
sense which the objection requires, proves exactly the re¬ 
verse. It transfers the certainty from the physical laws of 
nature, as now defined by our present knowledge, to the 
scheme of universal providence, as it lies open to the view 
of Omniscience, and thus resolves itself into a philosophical 
rendering of the great doctrine of the Bible, that “known 
unto God are all his works from the beginning of the 
world,” and that in the counsels of Infinite Wisdom there 
is “no variableness, nor the shadow of turning.” Our own 
experience reveals the constant action of the human will 
upon the human body, and upon all portions of matter 
that lie within the range of the muscular strength and 
physical powers of man. These are small, indeed, com¬ 
pared with the forces ever at work in the great cosmical 
system; but still their action, through successive ages, has 
wrought sensible effects even on the physical condition of 
whole regions of the earth. We should count it absurd to 
speak of mere physical law deciding the movements of the 
ball, the marble, or the orange, when once placed within 
the grasp of a human hand. Once let us conceive of 
spiritual beings whose power over matter bears the same 
proportion to ours as the orange to the mass of the earth, 
and the seeming immutability of physical law, even in the 
case of the planetary movements, would equally disappear. 
It would resolve itself at once into some higher law of the 
spiritual world. But we can have no proof from reason 
alone that no such creatures exist in the universe. Our 
proof is limited to the fact that for a certain number of 
years, as far as human testimony can reach, there has 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


79 


been no such gigantic interference with the regularity of 
the celestial motions, though the will of man interferes 
ceaselessly with all the products of nature on the surface 
of our own planet. But this contrast between the vastness 
of the starry world, and the narrow range of human volition, 
however conspicuous in fact, has no semblance whatever of 
being a necessary truth. We have no proof whatever, on 
grounds of pure reason, that the constancy for thousands 
of years of the planetary courses, undisturbed by spiritual 
agencies immensely more potent than the human will, is 
more than a counterpart, on a larger scale, to the quiet 
and silent growth of the corn in the harvest-field, till the 
hour when the husbandman “ puts in his sickle because 
the harvest is come.” 

Thirdly, the objection involves also a false definition of 
miracles themselves. They are defined to be “something 
at variance with nature and law,” suspensions of a known 
law, arbitrary interpositions, and events “isolated and un¬ 
caused.” But none of these descriptions are correct. They 
are not, in the view of the Bible or of Christians, mere 
arbitrary interferences, but acts of Divine power, exerted 
for a special purpose, in harmony with a scheme of moral 
government, to which all physical laws whatever are also 
subordinate. They obey a moral and spiritual law of the 
Divine Wisdom, higher and nobler, but possibly no less 
clear and definite in its own sphere, than the law of gravi¬ 
tation itself. They are suspensions of known law, just as 
the law that bodies fall toward the earth is suspended 
when wood floats in water, or a balloon mounts toward the 
sky; or the law that a bell is sonorous is intercepted and 
suspended when it is rung in an exhausted receiver. The 
difference is not in the principle, but in the special cause 
of the suspension. In one case a lower physical law is 
intersected and reversed by another law, equally physical, 


80 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


but more extensive. In the other the same law is suspended 
and reversed by some spiritual agency, or a direct act and 
purpose of the Supreme Will. 

The objection denies further that any special features 
of the Christian records will justify our departure from the 
general incredulity, with which the ascription of a miracu¬ 
lous character to any strange event would be regarded in 
the present age of scientific attainment. To regard them 
as an exceptional case, it is alleged, transfers them from 
the domain of genuine history to that of mere legend. 
But it is hard to understand by what obliquity of judg¬ 
ment an assertion so preposterous could be made. The 
exact reverse is self-evidently true. A professed message 
from God, which barely affirmed its own Divine origin, and 
was accompanied by no credentials worthy of its Author, 
such as the signs and wonders of the Law and the Gospel 
supply, would be open, without defense, to the charge of 
being a mere dream of the imagination, and might be 
transferred at once from the region of fact and real history 
to that of mere legend. Miracles answer here to the crucial 
tests of the inductive philosophy, and form the contrast 
between a tissue of mere human fancies and authentic 
messages from heaven, sealed with the royal signet of the 
King of kings. 

Besides these errors, there is a deeper charge of self- 
contradiction, which lies against the whole tenor of this 
skeptical argument. Writers of this school, the disciples 
of the positive philosophy, when they would free physical 
science from the intrusion of metaphysics and religious 
faith, insist on the doctrine that our task, as students of 
nature, is confined to the discovery of laws, the mere gen¬ 
eralization of classes of phenomena, and that causes lie com¬ 
pletely beyond our reach; that their existence is doubtful, 
and their nature inconceivable. We know a series of events, 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 81 

of antecedents and consequents; but of secret links, named 
causes, which have been supposed to bind them together, 
we know, and can know, nothing. On this basis is raised 
a theory of negative atheism, that God may possibly exist, 
but that his existence must forever be uncertain, and is 
also needless for all the wants of human science. But 
when the miracles of the Gospel are to be set aside, and 
the supernatural banished from the thoughts of men, this 
reasoning is suddenly and completely reversed. These laws 
of nature, which before were nothing else than a summa¬ 
tion of observed facts, are transformed into real causes, 
inflexible and unalterable as the fates of the old heathens, 
which admit neither God, nor angel, nor man, to interfere 
with their absolute and supreme dominion. What contra¬ 
diction can be more gross and intolerable? The heathen, 
who cut down the cypress or the oak of the forest, hewed 
and squared it into decent shape, and, after using part to 
cook his food, turned the rest into an idol, and bowed 
down before it, was only a type of the more pretentious, 
but not less foolish, course of this unbelieving philosophy. 
Its disciples hew and carve the phenomena of nature, and 
turn the chips and parings, the secondary laws of art and 
of applied science, into passive instruments that minister to 
the comfort of human life. All the rest of those laws, 
though equally perishable in themselves, but a little more 
firm and massive in appearance, they invest with the attri¬ 
butes of Divinity. These are fixed, unalterable, eternal, 
incapable of being varied by the will of man, or by the 
power of the living God. The worship of such specula¬ 
tors, so far as they worship at all, is paid to this system 
of physical law, and to that alone. They fall down before 
it, like the old heathen before his wooden idol or molten 
image, and say, “Deliver me, for thou art my god.” And 
there is little doubt, if one of the old prophets were to rise 


82 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


again, that he would pronounce over them once more that 
indignant sentence, “They have not known nor understood: 
for he Hath shut their eyes, that they call not see, and their 
hearts, that they can not understand.” 

III. The third class of objections refer to the sufficiency 
of miracles as the proofs and tests of a Divine revelation. 
And here it is urged that their force must be only relative, 
and depend on the knowledge or ignorance of those to 
whom they appeal. The miracle of an ignorant age ceases 
to be such in an age of greater light. Columbus’s predic¬ 
tion of an eclipse was supernatural to the islanders of the 
Antilles. Some have, therefore, applied to them the Greek 
proverb, that they are “marvels for fools,” and supposed 
it equivalent with the rebuke of the evil generation, who 
sought after a sign. Schleiermaclier held them to be only 
relative to the notions of the age. The Pharisees ascribed 
them to evil spirits, and the later Jews to a theft of the 
ineffable name. Signs may thus be suited to one age or 
one class, and not to others. Miracles, which would now 
be incredible, were not so in the age when they are said to 
have occurred. Evidence, which might be convincing and 
powerful to an age of ignorance, may have only an inju¬ 
rious influence when urged in these days, with whose 
scientific conceptions it is at variance. Where there is an 
indiscriminate belief of the supernatural, or* where it is 
wholly disbelieved, the allegation of particular miracles will 
be equally in vain. Some recent writers have held that 
revelation ought to be received, though destitute of strict 
evidence either internal or external. Others have strongly 
denied that historical testimonies can be justly styled the 
evidences of Christianity. Whenever, instead of miracles 
being the sole certificate of the message, the force of evi¬ 
dence is made to lie in their union with the internal excel¬ 
lence of the doctrine, the latter becomes the real test for 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


83 


the admission of the former. Such a principle appears in 
the Bible itself, since false prophets might predict signs 
and wonders, which might also come to pass; and false 
Christs and false prophets, under the Gospel, by similar 
miracles, almost deceive the very elect. What is the value 
of faith at second-hand? Many Christian writers have held 
a right of appeal, superior to all miracles, to our own moral 
tribunal, as De Wette, Doderlein, and others. Thus all 
outward attestation would seem superfluous, if it concur 
with these moral convictions, or to be rejected if it oppose 
them. And hence the general conclusion is reached, that 
“the more knowledge advances, the more Christianity, as a 
real religion, must be viewed apart from connection with 
physical things.” 

There are here two important questions, much contro¬ 
verted even among Christian divines, which need some pa¬ 
tient thought before they can receive a distinct answer. 
How far is the evidence of miracles real and absolute, or 
only relative to the ignorance of those who witness them? 
What is the connection, also, between external and internal 
evidence? Do miracles alone, and apart from every moral 
test, form a complete attestation of a Divine message? Or 
do they need rather to be joined with some moral evidence 
before they can be received as decisive ? Christian writers, 
as Wardlaw and Trench, have given opposite replies to 
these questions. It becomes the more needful to use cau¬ 
tion in seeking to answer them. The truth, if once clearly 
defined and explained, will, perhaps, spare the necessity of 
sifting the divergent statements of Christian apologists. It 
will then. be needless to pursue the skeptical argument in 
detail through the pages of an essay, which pretends to 
throw new light on the study of the evidences, and seems 
only to wrap the subject in mist and confusion, that it may 
securely undermine the old foundations of the Christian faith. 


84 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


The reply to the first of these questions must plainly de¬ 
pend on the true definition of a miracle. If it be simply 
the suspension or reversal of the known laws of nature, 
then it must clearly be relative to our varying knowledge 
of those laws; and events miraculous in one age, or to one 
class, may cease to be so in a later age, or among better- 
instructed men. If it be a direct act of God, in contrast 
to all agency of second causes, and by an exercise of power 
strictly and exclusively Divine, then its nature is absolute 
and not relative, and must remain the same to all classes, 
and in every age of the world. 

The latter view has been adopted by many Christian 
writers in their works on the evidence of revelation. It 
seems to have the advantage of simplifying the argument; 
since miracles, thus defined, must plainly be a decisive 
proof that the message they accompany is Divine. But 
this seeming benefit is more than counterbalanced by the 
loss. On such a view it must be impossible to know when 
a miracle has been wrought, unless we could know all the 
possible results of second causes, in their most unusual 
combination, or define the limits of power which may be¬ 
long to superhuman, but created intelligence. Now this is 
a knowledge which no one has ever attained, even with our 
actual advances in science, and amidst all the light of reve¬ 
lation. How much less can it be the condition on which 
the evidence for the truth of that revelation is made to 
depend! No definition of miracles can leave them avail¬ 
able as the proper tests of a Divine message, which requires 
a knowledge, both of God and of nature, quite beyond the 
attainments of those to whom the message is given. 

The following view is free from this fatal objection. 
Miracles, as evidence, may be immediate, mediate, or im¬ 
proper. Immediate miracles are those which satisfy the 
last definition, or distinct and immediate actings of the 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


85 


Great First Cause, apart from all second causes whatever. 
The resurrection of our Lord is an instance which seems 
clearly to belong to this first and highest category. Me¬ 
diate miracles are those wrought by some unusual and su¬ 
pernatural power bestowed on a Divine messenger. The 
miracles of our Lord himself, as the Son of man, may be 
correctly referred to this class, and still more undeniably 
those of his apostles. They were not immediate acts of the 
Divine power alone, hut are distinctly ascribed to a gift 
imparted to them as God’s messengers. “He gave them 
power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all 
manner of sickness and of disease.” “Behold, I give unto 
you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and on all 
the power of the enemy.” A deputed and real power, then, 
can not he denied without contradicting Scripture, and the 
adoption of a line of reasoning which destroys the distinc¬ 
tion between miracles and common events, by resolving all 
alike into the ceaseless operation of the First Cause alone. 
Improper miracles are those which result from rare and 
unusual combinations of second causes. In these foresight, 
and not power, is the really-supernatural element. The 
plague of the locusts, the feeding with quails, and even the 
destruction of the cities of the plain, may probably be re¬ 
ferred to this class. In each case second causes, already in 
being, were clearly employed; and it is not certain that 
more was needed than a prearrangement, by Divine Wis¬ 
dom, of special conditions for their combined action. The 
effect on those who saw the events would be equally mirac¬ 
ulous, and create a full persuasion of the presence of the 
mighty hand of God. 

These three kinds of miracles, however distinct in their 
definition, it may be impossible in many cases to distinguish 
from each other. Their value, as evidence, can not then 
depend upon such a discrimination having been previously 


86 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

made. We need a practical definition which shall include 
them all, and bring into relief that common feature on 
which their strength as evidence for a Divine revelation 
depends. 

Miracles, then, viewed as evidences for revelation, are 
“unusual events not within the ordinary power of man, nor 
capable of being foreseen by man’s actual knowledge of 
second causes, and wrought or announced by professed mes¬ 
sengers of God, to confirm the reality of their message.” 
The definition has a negative and a positive element. 
There must be no second causes, or at least none within 
human knowledge, that will account for the event; and 
there must be an apparent connection with some plain 
moral object or some professed message from God. When¬ 
ever these two conditions meet, we have a case of miracu¬ 
lous- evidence. Some of these, by the progress of science 
in later times, might come within the range of man’s actual 
power over nature, or his insight into natural changes, and 
would then cease to be miraculous; while others may sur¬ 
pass not only human, but superhuman power, and imply a 
direct exercise of the Divine Omnipotence. 

The use of miracles as evidence, like the need itself for 
supernatural revelation, depends on the doctrine of the Fall. 
It results from the dimness and blindness" of the heart of 
man in all spiritual things. In a perfect state, all second 
causes would be referred instinctively to the will of God, 
and all nature be translucent with the Maker’s presence. 
Miracles, in their strangeness and peculiarity, would cease 
to exist. All we behold would be miracle. Even the 
direct converse of the Word of God with his sinless crea¬ 
tures would only be the crown and top-stone of one har¬ 
monious systeifr of communion among men and angels, and 
all the holy creatures of God. But when, through the 
power of sin, creation has grown opaque to the eyes of 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


87 


men, and the physical course of nature has Concealed the 
presence of the great Lawgiver, miracles are needed, to form 
an antidote to blind nature-worship, and undo the subtile 
spell of unbelief. This end may be secured, either by acts 
of Divine power, suspending or reversing the laws of na¬ 
ture; or else by combining these in such an unusual way, 
and with so clear a moral purpose, as to force the convic¬ 
tion on reluctant minds that Nature is only a servant and 
handmaid of the living God, who is the moral governor of 
the universe. 

The evidence, then, of miracles, in the widest sense of 
the term, may in some cases be only relative to the knowl¬ 
edge of those who witness them. Still there are few, if 
any, of those recorded in the Bible, which lie so near to 
this inferior limit as to be really affected in their evidential 
power by the discoveries of modern science, and the in¬ 
crease of man’s power over the works of God. Even sup¬ 
posing some of the plagues of Egypt to have been effected 
simply by a preadjustment of second causes, no reach of 
science, even now, could enable the wisest philosopher to 
rival Moses, and to predict the coming of the scourge and 
the time of its removal. Our chemistry, with its immense 
discoveries, leaves the miracle at Cana as purely miraculous 
as in the hour when it was wrought; and the feeding of 
the five thousand remains till now, as clearly as ever, a 
work truly supernatural and Divine. 

The evidence derived from miracles to confirm the truth 
of revelation needs thus no intrusion into the deep things 
of God, no exact discernment of limits which separate all 
created power and second causes from acts of Divine Om¬ 
nipotence, in order to give it force and validity. It de¬ 
pends simply on the union of two conditions; that second 
causes, adequate to the result, either do not exist, or are 
hidden from view; and that a moral cause, as the exhibi- 


88 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


tion of Divine power and holiness, or the confirmation of a 
Divine message, shall be plainly conspicuous. The words 
of the conscience-stricken magicians will then he applica¬ 
ble—“This is the finger of God.” And the reasoning of 
our Lord will apply—“If I by the finger of God cast out 
devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.” 

This leads to a second inquiry of equal importance. 
What is the relation between the external and internal evi¬ 
dence, between the miracles which attest a message, and 
the moral features of the alleged revelation? The path of 
truth seems here, as in many other cases, to lie almost 
midway between opposite extremes. 

First, it is not the doctrine of Scripture that miracles 
alone, simply as miracles, are decisive proofs that any mes¬ 
sage or teaching they accompany is from God. The mar¬ 
vels of the Egyptian sorcerers who withstood Moses, the 
caution in the law against teachers of idolatry, whose signs 
and wonders should come to pass, the account of our Lord’s 
temptation, his own warning against false prophets, whose 
great signs and wonders might almost deceive the elect, 
and other passages in the Epistles and Book of Kevelation, 
conspire to teach an opposite lesson. It avails nothing to 
allege that wicked spirits can never attain to works prop¬ 
erly Divine. Revelation would be needless, if men were 
already so wise as to know the highest possible reach of all 
created power, and instinctively to discern it from the 
workings of real Omnipotence. Indeed we have no proof 
that most of the miracles in the Bible require a higher 
power than its own promises assure to saints and angels in 
the kingdom of God; and the contrary may perhaps be 
implied, where miraculous gifts of the early Christians 
receive that impressive title—“the powers of the world to 
come.” 

The opposite extreme, however, that the goodness of 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


89 


the message, discerned by the light within, is the real test 
of the admissibility of miracles, instead of miracles being 
the tests of the message itself, is still more remote from 
the truth. A conscience so enlightened beforehand as to 
decide at once on the wisdom or folly, the truth or false¬ 
hood of every part of a message that claims God for its 
author, can stand in no need of a direct revelation from 
heaven. The same moral blindness, which alone calls for 
the remedy of a supernatural message, unfits men entirely 
for the perilous task of sitting in judgment on the words 
of their Maker. To see truth in the light of God is not 
the state of those to whom either the Law or the Gospel 
is first given. It is the best and highest attainment of 
those who have received in faith the words of their Maker, 
and been trained by them to the full enjoyment of his. 
presence; where faith is lost in sight, and provision for 
their journey through a land of moral pitfalls is exchanged 
for the gladness and glory of a heavenly inheritance. 

Miracles of themselves simply attest the presence and 
working of a superhuman power. They do not, without 
some further test, prove that this power is that of the 
true and only God. The Bible affirms the existence of 
spirits of evil superior to men in natural power and wis¬ 
dom, who must, therefore, be capable of working wonders, 
or predicting events and revealing secrets, beyond the range 
of mere human ability. Some further element, then, is re¬ 
quired beyond mere signs and wonders, though apparently 
supernatural, to prove the doctrine or message to be Divine. 
And this test may be twofold—the greatness of the mira¬ 
cles themselves, or the moral features of* the message when 
viewed as a whole. The first is the simplest; the second, 
the most decisive. Both of them rest alike on the voice 
of reason, and distinct examples in the Word of God. 
The Divine power must surpass the power of all spirits 

8 


90 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of evil j and if they are permitted to work seeming won¬ 
ders, it seems reasonable to expect that the Lord of heaven 
and earth will merely suffer it so far as to illustrate more 
brightly his own supremacy and omnipotence. Again, 
though revelation would be useless, if men were able to 
pass judgment safely in detail on every part of a Divine 
message, such a degree of moral discernment as would 
enable them, on the whole, to discern good from evil, the 
message of a holy and benevolent Deity from the lying 
voice of spirits of darkness, must surely belong to all 
mankind who have not reached the worst and lowest stage 
of judicial blindness. 

Now, both of these tests, which alone are needed to 
make the evidence of miracles adequate and complete, 
are distinctly recognized in the Bible history itself. The 
magicians of Egypt, so far as the words of Scripture are 
any guide, rivaled outwardly the signs of the first plagues 
and the previous wonders, with an inferiority in degree 
alone. After this limit their permitted power, or that of 
the false gods whose servants they were, failed them, and 
they were compelled to own, “This is the finger of God.” 
Again, when a prophet spoke in the name of the Jehovah, 
the success or failure of the signs he gave was declared to 
be the test of his sincerity or falsehood in his claim to a 
Divine commission. But if a prophet or dreamer showed a 
sign or wonder to persuade the Israelites into idol-worship, 
even the success of the sign was to be no proof of his 
authority. On the contrary, it is declared to be merely 
permitted for the trial of their fidelity, and the teacher 
of falsehood and idolatry was to be put to death for his 
crime. 

The words of Nicodemus in his secret interview with our 
Lord are quite consistent with the same view. The con¬ 
clusion rested apparently not on the mere fact of miracles, 




THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 


91 


but on their number or their greatness. “No man can do 
these miracles which thou doest, except God be with him.” 
Our Lord himself assigns the same reason for the guilt of 
the Jews in rejecting him. It was not simply because 
miracles had been wrought, but greater miracles than by 
any of the prophets, and therefore in fullest harmony with 
the rank and character of the true Messiah. “If I had 
not done among them the works which no other man did, 
they had not had sin.” The presence of miracles, then, 
simply and in itself, is not a completely-decisive proof of 
a Divine message. They may, in rare cases, accompany 
the permitted delusions of spirits of darkness. But mira¬ 
cles, striking and impressive in themselves, and not con¬ 
fronted by others still more miraculous, or when joined 
with a general impress of holiness in the message they 
attest, do form a complete and decisive evidence that the 
teaching is from God, and the revelation truly divine. 

Let us now sum up the general result of this inquiry. 

All science tends toward unity ; but the true source 
of that unity can not be found within the boundaries 
of physical science alone. This vast ocean has its tides 
secretly controlled by a higher law than the currents and 
rippling of its own waves. The real unity consists in a 
scheme of moral government, guided and disposed in every 
part by the wisdom of the great Lawgiver, of which only 
a small part is disclosed to us in our present state. There 
is a partial unity in every compartment of nature, but this 
is limited by its subordination to a greater whole. Me¬ 
chanical laws, which govern solid matter, are modified by 
the subtile influences of heat and electricity. These higher 
laws again are modified by vital action in all the forms of 
vegetable and animal life. All the lower forms of life 
upon earth, as well as all material objects, are controlled 
in various degrees by the reason and will of man. At 


92 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


this point in the ascent higher laws begin to appear—not 
of mechanical agency or physical sequence, but of moral 
government. Ideas force themselves upon our notice, of 
right and wrong, duty and disobedience, of sin and holiness, 
of reward and punishment. Beyond these there emerges 
to the view of faith, when enlightened by the Word of 
God, and by its echoes and reflections in the purified con¬ 
science, the glorious vision of a scheme of creation, provi¬ 
dence, and redemption, which spans eternity in its range; 
begins from the foundation of the world; stretches forward 
into the ages to come; includes all events, small and great, 
within its own capacious bosom; and makes all the out¬ 
ward works of the Creator, from the stars of heaven to 
the cedar of Lebanon and the hyssop on the wall, subserve 
the mysterious counsels of Infinite Wisdom and Love. 

The knowledge which man has attained, in any age of 
the world, of the laws of nature, is like an islet in the 
midst of this vast, undiscovered ocean of the counsels of 
the Most High. It gives him a firm standing-place for the 
active duties of his daily life, while its narrow limits teach 
him the duty of owning a higher power, and adoring with 
reverence at the footstool of his Almighty Creator. In a 
perfect moral state this limited and imperfect knowledge 
would never be a vail to hide from his eyes the presence 
and dominion of the Unseen King. But sin has darkened 
the human conscience; and ages of the world in which 
“many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased,” may 
blind the eyes of men to the limitations of physical law, 
and its dependence on the higher purposes of God’s moral 
government. They mistake this ocean islet—this narrow 
region of discovered physical laws, reared by the insect 
labors of thousands of men of science in successive gener¬ 
ations—for that mightier world to which the islet itself, 
and the ocean that girdles it, equally belong. It becomes 


THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 93 

needful, then, either by the unexpected inference of other 
physical laws still undiscovered and unknown, by signal 
and secret arrangements of Providence, or by the direct 
agency of spiritual messengers higher than men, to break 
through the thick crust of atheism which has begun to 
darken the conscience; and to force on it anew the convic¬ 
tion that man is a creature subject to the control of an 
all-wise Creator, and that higher laws than the dull 
mechanism of unconscious matter, or the low instincts of 
animal life, enter into the mighty scheme of God’s universal 
providence. This is the first and immediate effect of the 
ripara, or wonders, that herald and accompany the message 
of God. 

But to arouse the attention, and disperse the atheistic 
blindness which worships dead nature, is only their first 
effect. They are signs as well as wonders, or significant 
attendants of some message from heaven, some moral truth 
which they partly convey of themselves, and partly con¬ 
firm, as it flows from the lips of God’s appointed messen¬ 
gers. The miracles of the Bible startle men from their 
apathy, but they also teach and signify some celestial truth. 
The Flood, the destruction of the cities of the plain, were 
messages of solemn anger against abounding sin.. The 
smitten rock, from whence the water flowed at Rephidim, 
and the manna in the wilderness, were signs of a higher 
provision for the souls of men. The healing of the sick, 
the cleansing of lepers, the unstopping the ears of the deaf, 
the opening the eyes of the blind, the draught of fishes, the 
feeding of the multitudes, in our Lord’s ministry, had all 
of them a deep moral significance. The little islet of 
known -natural laws was invaded, its dull monotony was 
disturbed, and its tenants wakened up to wonder, curiosity, 
and eager inquiry, by a ship of heaven, laden with good 
news from a far country. But the ship had a firmness of 


94 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


its own, not less complete in its kind than the islet it was 
sent to visit, and its treasures were the products of a con¬ 
tinent, far more rich in its extent than the self-satisfied hut 
ignorant islanders could ever have dreamed of, before it 
anchored on their distant shore. The miracles of revela¬ 
tion are that ship of heaven. They have a system and 
structure of their own, adapted wonderfully to convey 
heavenly truth to the dwellers of earth, although the visit 
breaks through their contented slumber within the narrow 
region of sensible things. They seem, then, in themselves, 
like infractions on the dominion and permanence of the 
lower laws of nature, already known to men. But in truth 
they convey to them the products of a nobler and higher 
world of thought, of which the laws are equally firm, and 
even firmer, than those which the miracles seem to reverse, 
and are larger, wider, deeper, and nobler, unchangeable 
and everlasting. That higher world is the vast scheme and 
counsel of redeeming love. Its foundations are the attri¬ 
butes of Him who is unchangeable. Its hills and valleys are 
the wide range of moral and spiritual truth. Its rich pro¬ 
ductions are all those various lessons of duty, laws of holi¬ 
ness, and instincts of purity, wisdom, and grace, which will 
nourish and gladden the souls of the redeemed forever. 
Physical laws may be firm, but the moral laws of the 
Divine government are still firmer. The pillars of earth 
may tremble and be astonished; but no change can assail 
that city “which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God.” 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 


95 


CHAPTER V. 

THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 

The Bible differs from all other ancient books, which 
have claimed a sacred origin, by its historical character. 
In this respect it stands alone. The Koran of Mohammed 
is simply a series of monologues; only a few Scripture nar¬ 
ratives rhetorically disguised, or Arabian legends, interrupt 
the wearisome monotony of its religious appeals, invectives, 
and exhortations. The Hindoo Vedas are equally unhis- 
torical. Learned students, with their utmost efforts, can 
only just infer from them, indirectly, the age when they 
were written. The same feature appears in the Zendavesta, 
and the Egyptian sacred writings and Ritual of the Dead. 
All of these flit before us like ghosts or disembodied spir¬ 
its, and the garment of historical fact or allusion with 
which they are clothed is of the most thin and shadowy 
kind. 

The Old and the New Testament agree in a common 
character precisely the opposite to these pretended revela¬ 
tions. They include the history of a long and connected 
series of events, of great, public, and notorious acts of Di¬ 
vine Providence. In each of them four-sevenths of the 
whole is simple narrative; and the other books also, 
whether didactic, devotional, or prophetic, with hardly one 
exception, are fixed by clear and internal marks to their 
own place in the history. This is the stem which supports 
them all, the Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, and Prophets in 
the Old Testament, and the Epistles and Book of Revela- 


96 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


tion in the New. The Bible narrative, so simple and un¬ 
adorned in itself, seems here, like the rod of Aaron, to bud 
and bring forth blossoms and yield almonds. In these 
other hooks only a few chapters are direct history; but 
still their connection with the historical portions is intimate, 
unbroken, and complete. 

This character of the Bible is most favorable to the de¬ 
tection of its falsehood, or to the establishment of its truth. 
It multiplies greatly the tests which separate faithful tes¬ 
timony from the impostures of fraud and the mere illusions 
of fancy. Unreal history is too sandy a foundation on 
which to rear, with the least hope of success, a temple of 
pure and everlasting truth. Sincere and honest narratives, 
though slightly discordant or imperfect in a few minor de¬ 
tails, might certainly he the means of conveying to us Di¬ 
vine messages of the highest worth and authority. But it 
is incredible that histories which would he condemned in 
all other cases as dishonest or worthless, legendary and de¬ 
ceptive in their broad outlines, should he the stem upon 
which are found to grow the blossoms and richest fruitage 
of heavenly wisdom. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, 
nor figs of thistles. A pure morality and theology can 
never be the fruit of dishonest and deceptive history. 
Once let the conviction spread that whole books of the 
Bible, and main portions of its narratives are gross, strange, 
and monstrous distortions of the real facts, or else mere 
legends containing no real facts whatever, and Christianity 
will have received a fatal death-wound in the minds of 
educated and thoughtful men. 

The Pentateuch and the four Grospels are the historical 
basis, on which all the other Scriptures of the Old and of 
the New Testament entirely depend. Each has been ex¬ 
posed, of late years, to repeated and persevering charges 
of historical falsehood. Early forms of skepticism ripened 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BTBLE. 97 

at length, in Strauss’s “Leben Jesu,” into an attempt to 
dissolve the whole of the Gospels into a heap of fables, 
due entirely to the dreaming and inventive imagination of 
the early Christians. The cool audacity of the hypothesis, 
with the laborious minuteness of its detailed criticisms, 
created a momentary sensation; just as the tale of a lunatic 
may be so minute and particular in its various inventions 
as to make us almost forget for a time how preposterous it 
is. But this tide-wave has gone by, though some traces of 
it may be left behind. The Gospels are too recent in their 
date, too intensely real in their tone, too fruitful in histor¬ 
ical consequences, to make it possible for so wild a theory 
to have more than a brief popularity among unbelievers 
themselves. The oscillation from naturalism into mythi- 
cism was followed inevitably by a backward movement into 
naturalism again. And indeed this uneasy alternation can 
never cease till the eyes of the soul are opened, like those 
of the blind man in the Gospel, and it learns to bow the 
knee in reverence and worship before the Son of God. 

The attacks on the Pentateuch began earlier, and have 
been still more persevering. Skepticism had here many 
advantages which were entirely wanting in its assaults upon 
the Gospel history. The period itself is more remote by 
nearly two thousand years. The law, being a revelation 
originally for the Jews alone, has a much weaker hold 
than the Gospel on the faith and sympathy of the great 
body of modern Christians. Till quite lately, there were 
few collateral sources of information to be found, either in 
ancient monuments or heathen records. The efforts of un¬ 
believing criticism were thus confined mainly to a dissec¬ 
tion of the books themselves. From the time of Astruc 
onward, a long series of writers have labored to detect 
inconsistencies, to disprove the Mosaic authorship, and to 

transfer the broken fragments of the Pentateuch to various 

9 


98 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


legend-makers, or compilers of loose tradition, under the 
Jewish kings. More recently the progress of discovery in 
the remains of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Babylon, has 
supplied far more copious materials for comparison with 
the histories of the Old Testament. Its later books have 
gained singular and unexpected confirmation from results 
of Assyrian and Babylonian research. But the effect of 
Egyptian discovery, in the comparison of "the monuments 
with the books of Moses, is more controverted and ambigu¬ 
ous. Here also many facts, usages, and details in the 
sacred narrative are confirmed by the monuments in a 
striking manner. But on the main question of the general 
outline of the early history some learned students, while 
differing by whole centuries and millennia in their own 
reckonings, agree to set aside the book of Genesis as leg¬ 
endary aud unhistorical, that they may replace it by their 
own views of the immense antiquity of Egyptian civiliza¬ 
tion. An attempt has lately been made to bring these 
supposed discoveries within the general reach of English 
readers in a popular form; and thus to destroy* their faith 
in the veracity of those books of Moses, which form the 
historical basement of the whole series of the Jewish and 
Christian revelations. 

It would be impossible, in a few pages, to enter into the 
details of an inquiry so immense and various. The Bible 
histories occupy seventeen books of the Old, and five of 
the New Testament, and spread over a space, at the lowest 
reckoning, of nearly four thousand years. Within this wide 
range, and with all the various materials amassed by modern 
research, hundreds, and almost thousands of questions may 
be raised, that would each require a chapter or small volume 
for their full discussion. Our knowledge of the earliest 
period is still so obscure, and the views both of those who 
reject the authority of the Pentateuch, and of those who 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 99 

maintain it, are so diverse, that a suspense of judgment on 
several important questions may be still the wisest course, 
even after the most careful use of all the existing evidence. 
But a way lies open by which, in spite of some questions 
still unsolved, and confident assertions by a few men of 
science, agreed in rejecting Moses, but still at variance 
among themselves, we may come to a full assurance, in 
agreement with the plainest maxims of inductive philos¬ 
ophy, on the massive strength and solidity of the historical 
foundations of the Christian faith. 

The great question which requires an answer is this: 
Have we any clear and full warrant for believing the ve¬ 
racity of the Bible historians, and the substantial truth of 
their narratives, however plainly intermingled with state¬ 
ments of supernatural events, and whatever minute discrep¬ 
ancies may seem at first sight to be detected by a rigid 
and searching inquiry? And here two prefatory remarks 
seem desirable before we proceed to consider the direct 
evidence of their truth. 

/ First of all, the veracity of these writers is closely linked, 
in the general faith of Christians, with the doctrine of their 
special inspiration, and an implied belief of their freedom 
from all error in delivering the messages of God. This 
intimate union of two distinct ideas, however natural and 
desirable for the uses of practical piety, may become a 
snare and a source of perplexity in tracing out the reason¬ 
able grounds of our Christian faith. We may be charged 
with a circular and sophistical mode of reasoning; as if 
we believe the Scriptures inspired and infallible because a 
few texts seem to affirm it, and reckon these texts decisive 
evidence because all Scripture is true and inspired. Faith, 
however, in the exact limit and extent of the Scripture 
canon, and in a mode of inspiration so complete as to 
exclude the slightest error or discrepancy, is rather the 


100 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


crown and top-stone than the basis of a reasonable belief 
in Christianity. It could not have' been essential while the 
canon was unfinished, nor for centuries afterward, when 
several books were widely but not universally received; 
while in modern times a less rigid view of the effect of 
inspiration can claim many advocates of deep and earnest 
piety, and of general soundness in the faith. On the other 
hand, a conviction that the sacred writers, especially the 
Evangelists, are sincere, honest, and credible witnesses of 
the facts they record seems a first essential of all real 
faith in Christianity. For surely no one can hold the 
Evangelists and apostles to have been fraudulent historians 
and dishonest witnesses, and still receive the Gospel itself 
as a message truly Pivine. 

There is here an important distinction between the doc¬ 
trinal and prophetic books or passages of Scripture and 
the historical books themselves. In the former there is 
generally a direct or virtual claim of Divine authority. 
Their character is totally changed when we view them as 
purely human. We must accept them as Divine, or own 
them to be an immoral experiment on the credulity of 
mankind. But the historical books, with the exception of 
prophetic passages or doctrinal discourses, require no such 
alternative. The claim to inspiration is not made by each 
historian on his own behalf. It is not plainly implied by 
the mere existence of the record. No one without a special 
commission can reveal heavenly truth so as to claim with 
full authority the obedience of mankind; but every honest 
witness may give a true report of discourses he has heard, 
or events he has seen, or of which copious evidence has 
been placed within his reach, without special and super¬ 
natural inspiration. If St. Luke had not written, and the 
accounts to which his preface alludes had survived, they 
might have been disfigured by some mistakes and errors, 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 101 


and have obscured the due proportion of the events they 
contained; but they would doubtless have agreed in the 
main with our present Gospels, and might have nourished 
for ages the spiritual life of the whole Church. Entire 
freedom from the least error, if proved by distinct evidence, 
is a superadded perfection of the sacred narratives, which 
increases their practical value, and simplifies the acting of 
Christian faith; but their honesty, as the work of upright 
witnesses, and careful a*d well-informed historians, is the 
first condition on which all reasonable faith in Christianity 
must depend. 

The life, death, and resurrection of Christ—the bases of 
Christianity—are recorded by four distinct writers in the 
four Gospels. This agrees with the maxim of the law of 
Moses, and the lesson of common-sense, that “in the mouth 
of two or three witnesses every word should be established.” 
The plurality of the witnesses is thus made one chief ele¬ 
ment in the strength of their united testimony. Every 
view, then, of the inspiration of these books which sets 
aside or obscures the individuality of the four writers, and 
reduces them to fingers of the same hand, used mechanic¬ 
ally by the Spirit of God, defeats one main purpose for 
which the message was conveyed to us in its actual form. 
No further truth respecting the special inspiration of the 
Evangelists ought to cloud from our view the fact, so con¬ 
spicuous in itself, and so important in reference to the 
great object of the revelation, that we have a concurrence 
of four distinct and separate witnesses to all the main facts 
and many details of the Gospel history. 

Secondly, the veracity of the Bible has been often ques¬ 
tioned and denied on the simple ground that it contains 
miraculous events and prophecies. A whole series of Ger¬ 
man critics base their rejection of its histories, in their 
actual form, entirely on this principle, that the mention 


102 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of a miracle is “evident proof of a later narrator, who was 
no eye-witness of the event.” The great question is thus 
prejudged in the gross before any attempt is made to con¬ 
firm this general disbelief by detailed criticism. But such 
a line of argument bears its condemnation on its face; for 
the claim of the Bible is plainly that it contains a series 
of messages from God to man, attested by signs, wonders, 
and prophecies. To make the presence of these in the 
narrative a disproof of its reality is therefore a flagrant 
contradiction of all common-sense. Two demands alone 
can be reasonably made: that the history, setting apart its 
miraculous character, shall possess all the other marks of 
honesty and truth; and that the testimony to these miracles 
and prophecies, in its strength and clearness, shall corre¬ 
spond with thei-r importance as public and solemn credentials 
of a revelation from God. 

Again, the improbability of miracles, which evidence has 
to overcome, depends entirely on their association with some 
great religious object, or their independent occurrence. In 
the former case they can not be more unlikely than one or 
other of these affirmations: that there is a God; that men 
stand in need of fuller light from their Maker; and that a 
God of wisdom and love has made provision for this wide 
and deep want of mankind. In the latter case their occur¬ 
rence is just as unlikely as the supposition that an all-wise 
Governor will abrogate the laws he has ordained, in mere 
caprice, and with no apparent motive whatever. Thus in 
one case we have a high probability that they will, and in 
the other that they will not occur. The proposal to test 
the Bible, in this respect, by the rules applied to common 
histories, is therefore a logical absurdity of the most glaring 
kind. We have been told, for instance, that the outward 
evidences of Scripture are “not adequate to guarantee nar¬ 
ratives inherently incredible,” and that our investigation 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 


103 


“forfeits its historical character” unless we scrutinize the 
Christian miracles “ on the same grounds on which we should 
investigate any ordinary narrative of the supernatural or 
marvelous.” This amounts, in fact, to an assertion that 
it is just as unlikely an all-wise Creator should work signs 
and wonders with the highest reason conceivable for such 
an exercise of his omnipotence, or out of mere caprice with 
no reason whatever. 

The way is now open for a brief review of the direct evi¬ 
dence which attests the historical truth of the Old and New 
Testaments. We may distinguish six main periods: from 
Creation to the Exodus, from the Exodus to the Temple, 
from thence to the Captivity, and from the Captivity to 
Christ; and, in the New Testament, from the Birth of our 
Lord to his Ascension, and from thence to the close of the 
history, or St. Paul’s arrival at Rome. The earliest period 
is lost in the shades of remote antiquity, where, till of 
late, few outward materials for comparison could he found; 
but the last answers to the palmiest days of the Roman 
Empire, and the most public and conspicuous era of clas¬ 
sical history. The sacred history, however, from first to 
last, is recorded on the same general scale, with a marked 
harmony of character, style, and tone. The natural course 
is to ascend from the last period, where the means for test¬ 
ing its reality are most abundant, to the earlier ones, where 
they are of recent discovery, and still comparatively uncer¬ 
tain and obscure. 

I. The Book of Acts is a whole, complete in itself, dis¬ 
tinct in character from the Gospels, and not less distinct 
from the histories of the Old Testament. It abounds in 
testimonies to the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and 
to the fact of numerous miracles wrought during its course 
by the apostles to confirm their message. Apart from 
these features, has it all the marks of genuine history? 


104 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Does it satisfy the various tests by which an authentic 
record of facts may be discerned from the tales of impos¬ 
ture, from deliberate fiction, or from the dreams of excited 
fancy ? The evidence may clearly be of three kinds: de¬ 
rived from its allusions to a real geography and the actual 
history of the times, from its coincidences with the rest of 
the New Testament, especially St. Paul’s Epistles, and from 
the internal keeping and harmony of its own narrative. 
In each of these it is unusually full and copious, and space 
will not allow more than an enumeration in the briefest 
form. 

1. From the Ascension to the death of Herod Agrippa. 
The book opens with an allusion to a former treatise by 
the same author, containing the events of our Lord’s min¬ 
istry till his ascension. This treatise is still extant in our 
third Gospel, and agrees with the description, and also 
with several features of style in tlie later narrative. Conf. 
Luke iii, 1-4; ii, 1-6; Acts v, 37; xi, 28; xviii, 12; 
xxiv, 27. It alludes next to forty days from the resurrec¬ 
tion to the ascension, followed by a few days of earnest 
and continued prayer before the day of Pentecost. This 
is the usual name of the second Jewish festival in Philo, 
Josephus, and other Greek writers; and its meaning—the 
fiftieth day from the Passover—corresponds with the double 
definition of the intervals of time. The disciples are called, 
in the first and second chapters, Galileans. This agrees 
both with the Gospel account of the chief scene of our 
Lord’s ministry, and with the nickname of the Christians, 
as late as Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. Olivet is called 
“a Sabbath day’s journey from Jerusalem.” This is con¬ 
firmed by the known topography, and by Jewish authorities 
on the distance allowed to be traveled on the Sabbath. 
Aceldama is said to be the name of the field of blood in 
“ the proper dialect” of Jerusalem. This agrees with the 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 


105 


local use of Syriac in Judea. Joseph, called Barsabas, was 
also surnamed Justus. This indicates the presence of the 
Homans in Palestine, leading to the occasional acquisition, 
by Jews themselves, of Latin surnames. The countries 
from which the Jews are said to have been present on the 
day of Pentecost agree with the known state of intercourse 
in the Roman world, and with their wide dispersion through 
all those lands and provinces, as confirmed by Josephus 
and other testimonies. Mesopotamia and Judea come to¬ 
gether ; for the grouping refer to dialects, and the Chaldee 
and the Syriac of Palestine were near akin to each other. 
Both Jews and proselytes are mentioned as numerous, and 
the number t)f Gentile proselytes in that age is confirmed 
by all historians. In the sermon of St. Peter the sepulcher 
of David is said to be among the Jews at Jerusalem to that 
day. It still occupies a leading place in plans, views, and 
descriptions of Mount Zion and its vicinity. Williams’s 
Holy City, Front, and p. 417. The Beautiful Gate of the 
Temple and the Porch of Solomon 3 *are named as places of 
especial resort. The latter is described by Josephus—An¬ 
tiquities, xx, 9—and the former, though the Greek name 
does not seem to occur, answers, both in position and mean¬ 
ing, to the gate called Susan by the Jews from its beauty. 
The captain of the Temple is named, in passing, along with 
the chief-priests. The same officer is mentioned by Jose¬ 
phus—Ant., xx, 6, 2; B. J., ii, 12, 6; and vi, 5, 3—and 
under the kindred name of “overseer of the Temple,” in 
2 Mac. iii, 4. The rivalry of the Sadducees and Pharisees, 
which runs through the history, and the special opposition 
of the former to the preaching of the resurrection, agrees 
fully with larger details in Josephus. Annas is named as 
high-priest, and Caiaphas associated with him. The former, 
under the name of Ananus, is noted by Josephus as “most 
fortunate; for he had five sons, and all of these had the 


106 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


high-priesthood, and he himself, first of all, held the same 
honor a long time, which happened to no other of the high- 
priests.” The appointment and deposition of Caiaphas is 
also named—Ant., xviii, 2, 2, and 4, 3—the latter just after 
Pilate was removed from his office. The cotemporary rule 
of Herod Antipas and Pilate—Acts iv, 27—appears, also, 
both in Josephus and Suetonius. The surname Barnabas, 
given to Joses, and its interpretation, agree with the rela¬ 
tive use of the two languages in Judea and Syria. The 
celebrity of Gamaliel agrees with the mention in the Mischna 
of Babbin Gamaliel, son of Babbi Symeon, and grandson 
of Hillel. The statement that those who were with the 
high-priest were of the Sadducees, answers to the state¬ 
ment—Ant., xx, 9, 1—where Ananus, the son of Annas, 
is said to follow the “ sect of the Sadducees, who were fierce, 
with reference to legal judgments, beyond all the Jews.” 
The passing use of the title, “the^ taxing or census,” ap¬ 
plied to that under Cyrenius or Quirinus, agrees with the 
account in Josephus of its political celebrity, as a main era 
in Jewish and Syrian history. The mention of Hebrews 
and Hellenists at Jerusalem, the prevalence of Greek names 
among Hellenist Jews, as in the seven deacons, and the 
existence of national synagogues, as that of the Libertines, 
or Jewish freedmen, are all features of instructive cor¬ 
respondence with the actual circumstances of the times. 
The road to Gaza is called “desert,” in agreement with the 
topography. The name Candace, according to Pliny—vi, 
29—was taken in succession by the queens of Upper 
Egypt, or the district of Meroe. Other features of cor¬ 
respondence with general history are: the resort of wor¬ 
shipers to Jerusalem from remote countries at the feasts; 
the relative position of Gaza, Azotus, and Cesarea; the 
temporary dominion of Aretas over Damascus—Acts ix, 
23-25; 2 Cor. xi, 32, 33—the rest of the churches, ex- 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 107 

plained by Caligula’s persecution of the Jews in the last 
years of his reign; the nearness of Lydda and Joppaj* the 
use of the name Tabitha by the apostle, and Dorcas by the 
Greek historian; the mention of the Italian band; the 
military force at Cesarea; the rigid practice of the Jews 
about eating with Gentiles; the importance attached to the 
distinction of food, as lawful or impure; the greater free¬ 
dom shown by the Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene; the 
place and occasion when the name Christian was intro¬ 
duced ; the mention of the reign of Claudius in contrast to 
that of Caligula, when Agabus gave the prophecy, and 
that of Nero when the history was written; the reign of 
Herod Agrippa over Judea, under Claudius; his quarrel 
with Tyre, his reconciliation, and his sudden death after a 
public oration at Cesarea. 

2. From the death of Herod to St. Paul’s voyage to 
Rome. 

The number and variety of these external allusions and 
confirmations of the history seems only to increase when 
the Gospel is formally spread among the Gentiles by the 
first missionary journey. Seleucia is mentioned familiarly, 
in passing, as the port of Antioch. Salamis and Paphos 
are placed on opposite sides of Cyprus, the first nearer 
Antioch, the second more remote from it. The Jews were 
numerous in the island, and had many synagogues there, 
in agreement with the mention of their expulsion from it 
in the time of Trajan. A proconsul, not a propretor, is 
named. Suetonius mentions that Cyprus was at first an im¬ 
perial province, when Augustus shared the provinces with 
the senate, but that he restored it to the senate again. The 
sorcerer had an Arabic as well as a Hebrew name, and the 
apostle a Roman. This agrees with the extensive intermix¬ 
ture of the Jews, by residence, with other nations, and with 
St. Paul’s birth as a Roman citizen. The site of Antioch in 


108 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Pisidia has been lately re-discovered, “with an inscription, 
Antiocheae Caesare.” Iconium is assigned by Xenophon to 
Phrygia—Anab., i, 2, 19—but by Strabo, Cicero, and Pliny 
to Lycaonia, and by Ammianus Marcellinus to Pisidia. 
Here no province is named for it, and it seems at the time 
to have been a distinct territory, ruled by a tetrarch—Plin. 
Nat. Hist., v, 27—Lystra and Derbe are called cities of 
Lycaonia, and it is said to have a distinct dialect. So. we 
read in Stephanus Byzantinus, “Derbe is a garrison and 
port (?) of Isauria; but some call it Derbea, which is, in 
the dialect of Lycaonia, the juniper bush.” Attalia is 
mentioned as near to Perga, and a seaport. It lies on the 
opposite side of a large plain, and was built by Attalus for 
trade with Syria and Egypt, and is still called Satalia. The 
land route from Antioch to Jerusalem is briefly described as 
passing through Phenice and Samaria. The law of Moses 
is affirmed by St. James to be read iu the synagogues every 
Sabbath throughout the Eastern cities. This wide extension 
of Jewish synagogue worship, and its constant character, is 
confirmed by Jewish and classic writers. Phrygia, Galatia, 
Asia, Mysia, Bithynia, and Troas are named incidentally, 
but in their natural order, in the apostle’s journey to the 
coast. The voyage to Philippi takes three days, with a 
notice that the wind was favorable. The return, with no 
such notice, is said to have been in five days. Samothracia 
and Neapolis are made the two stages of these voyages in 
their due order. Philippi is termed “ the first city of that 
part of Macedonia, and a colony.” The province has been 
broken into four districts, in its conquest by iEmilius Pau- 
lus. Philippi was the first city of importance within the 
province^on the line of route. It was also a Boman colony, 
and the inscription is still found on coins: “Colonia Au¬ 
gusta Julia Philippensis.” The Jewish place of prayer 
was by a river side. A small stream, Gangites, ran by the 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 109 


town, and such proseuchae were near running streams for 
convenience in Jewish purifications. Lydia was “a seller 
of purple, of Thyatira.” Inscriptions still remain of “the 
guild of dyers” of Thyatira. The names of the magistrates 
and officers, and the mode of punishment, heating with rods, 
agree with the character of the city as a Roman colony. 
The apostle “journeyed through Amphipolis and Apollonia 
to Thessalonica.” The great Egnatian road (6ddq) connects 
these towns, and an ancient itinerary reckons these three 
stages at thirty-three, thirty, and thirty-seven Roman miles. 
Thessalonica was a free Greek city. The mention of the 
Remus and the politarchs, or rulers, corresponds. They 
are Greek rather than Roman names. The original “where 
was the synagogue of the Jews,” implies that one was found 
here only, and not in the three other towns. Thessalonica 
was the capital of the province, and hence was a natural 
place for this preference on the part of the Jews. Athens 
is said to be “wholly given to idolatry;” and Xenophon 
calls the city “one entire altar, altogether an offering to 
the gods.” Pausanias calls the Athenians “more devout 
toward the gods than other persons.” The sects of the 
Epicureans and Stoics, and the curious, inquisitive, talk¬ 
ative character of the Athenians, are other features of 
strict historical reality. Altars, also, dyvilurrui Oew to an 
unknown God, are affirmed by Pausanias and Philostratus 
to have been reared in several parts of the city. Mention 
is made of a decree of Claudius, that all Jews should 
depart from Rome. Suetonius writes of that emperor: 
“Judaeos, Chresto impulsore assidue tumultuantes, Roma 
expulit.” €t is named, in passing, that Gallio was deputy 
of Achaia while St. Paul was at Corinth. Tacitus gives 
particulars of his appointment through his brother Seneca, 
and the time agrees punctually with the date inferred here 
from the rest of the history, or A. R. 52-54. He is called 


110 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Proconsul; and the province had. been imperial for a time 
under Tiberius, but was transferred by Claudius to the 
senate. The allusion to St. Paul’s vow, and his haste to 
reach Jerusalem by Pentecost, agrees with the customs of 
the Jews. The phrases “he went up, and saluted the 
Church, and went down to Antioch,” answer to a time 
when Jerusalem was still the sacred metropolis even of 
Gentile believers, since the place is implied, but not 
named. Asiarchs are mentioned at Ephesus, and also the 
worship of Diana, as the tutelar goddess of the city. A 
passage occurs with the phrase, “I swear by our country’s 
deity, the great Artemis of the Ephesians,” and also an 
inscription with the words, “ the great goddess Artemis 
before the city.” The ruins of the theater, and its site, 
indicate it to be the largest of any known in the remains 
of antiquity. The name of Asiarchs is also given, in 
many inscriptions, to officers chosen by the cities of Asia 
to preside over their festivals. The title of the “town- 
clerk,” or “ypap/xareu^^ occurs in existing Ephesian in¬ 
scriptions. So also the description of the image zho7r£T^<r, 
or Jove descended, and the title of the city, Newxopo< r, 
or temple-keeper, are confirmed as in actual and frequent 
use at Ephesus. The intervals of the return voyage from 
Philippi correspond minutely with the known distances, 
and with the interval from the Passover to the Pentecost— 
Acts xx, 6, 16; xxi, 8—Philippi, Troas, Assos, Mitylene, 
Chios, Samos, Trogyllium, Miletus, Ephesus, Coos, Rhodes, 
Patara, Cyprus, Tyre, Ptolemais, Cesarea, are all mentioned 
on the route in the most rapid manner; but the presence 
of an eye-witness is apparent in every part, and is also 
implied, in the most unobtrusive way, by the transition to 
the first person —“We sailed away from Philippi after the 
days of unleavened bread.” Acts xx, 6. We have, next, 
the mention of the Egyptian, and of the Sicarii, both of 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. Ill 

them named more fully by Josephus; of the Stairs of 
Antonia, where was the Roman garrison; of the prefer¬ 
ence, by the Jews, of their native dialect, while Greek 
was still widely intelligible; of the privileges of Roman 
citizens, and the fear of the captain who had violated 
them; of the feud of the Pharisees and Sadducees; of the 
recent change of high-priest, after the death of Jonathan, 
mentioned in Josephus, which accounts for St. Paul’s igno¬ 
rance that Ananias held the office; and of the letter of 
Lysias to Felix, so characteristic of a Greek, holding office 
under a Roman governor. We have a further harmony 
with facts, otherwise known to us, in the government of 
Felix at this time, his covetous spirit, his marriage with 
the Jewish Drusilla, and his removal, when Festus was 
his successor; in the frequent appeals from Judea to the- 
emperor at Rome; in the royal dignity of Agrippa and 
Bernice, though they had plainly no authority at Jeru¬ 
salem; and in the whole course of procedure of a Roman 
provincial governor, when conducting a cause of public 
importance. In all these numerous particulars every con¬ 
ceivable test of genuine history is satisfied and fulfilled. 

3. The voyage and shipwreck of St. Paul. 

These two closing chapters, when minutely examined, 
with all the light which can be thrown upon them by 
modern knowledge of the Levant, and by classical ac¬ 
counts of the ships and navigation of the ancients, become 
a striking and impressive demonstration of the truth of the 
whole narrative to which they belong. The subject has 
been fully treated by Mr. Smith in his “Voyage and Ship¬ 
wreck of St. Paul,” to which the reader'must be referred; 
or to the brief abstract of its chief results in Dean Alford,’s 
Notes, or in Supplement G to Paley’s Evidences.* It is 


* School Edition, Religious Tract Society. 





112 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


almost impossible to conceive bow a narrative of the same 
length, without any loss of perfect simplicity, could be 
more densely crowded with decisive tokens of its being 
the result of ocular testimony, and in every part historic¬ 
ally true. 

4. Coincidences with the Epistles of St. Paul. 

These have been traced at length in the Horae Paulinas, 
and placed in so clear a light that it seems impossible to 
conceive how more convincing proofs could be given of the 
genuineness of the letters and of the historical truth of 
St. Luke’s narrative, from the first missionary journey to 
the arrival of St. Paul at Rome. The indirect nature of 
the coincidence, in almost every instance, creates an im¬ 
pression of reality, which no honest and candid mind can 
resist. A few remarks require correction, and other par¬ 
ticulars of the same kind may be added, as in my own 
supplement;* but the effect of Paley’s own work must be 
so decisive, on minds open to conviction, as scarcely to 
admit of sensible increase. 

5. Another class of evidence may be found in the in¬ 
ternal harmony of the history itself. Amidst the simplicity 
and truthfulness of tone in the separate narratives, there is 
a unity of design in the successive steps of the progress 
of the Grospel, which leads our thoughts to the perception 
of a Divine plan, steadily fulfilled,, while it only confirms 
the historical reality of each separate portion. The open¬ 
ing words of our Lord are like a key to the structure of 
the treatise: “Ye shall be witnesses to me, both in Jeru¬ 
salem and Judea, and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts 
of the earth.” This order is observed in the accounts that 
follow. Seven chapters record the spread of the Grospel at 
Jerusalem and in Judea. After the death of Stephen it is 


Horeo Apostol., Religious Tract Society. 



THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 113 

preached with great success in Samaria. The conversion 
of the eunuch is a first step in its diffusion to the ends of 
the earth. An apostle for the Gentiles is then provided. 
Their formal and public admission into the Church follows 
next, in the history of Cornelius. A central post among 
the Gentiles is gained at Antioch, and a Gentile name 
replaces that of Nazarenes. The persecution of Herod 
and the murder of an apostle sever the link which bound 
the Church so closely to Jerusalem. Then the first mis¬ 
sionary journey begins, with Antioch for its starting-point 
and goal of return. The freedom of Gentile believers from 
the law of Moses is secured by the council at Jerusalem. 
Then the Gospel, set free from its Jewish moorings, speeds 
swiftly forward through the heathen provinces—Phrygia and 
Galatia—to Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, 
and Ephesus, where the apostle receives a prophecy of that 
visit to Pome with which the Bible history comes to its 
final close. “ Paul purposed in the spirit when he had 
passed through Macedonia and Achaia to go to Jerusalem, 
saying, After I have been there I must also see Borne.” 
Acts xix, 21. His arrival there marks the close of the 
narrative, which begins with the acceptance of the Gospel 
by Jews at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and ends 
with its rejection by Jews and acceptance by Gentiles in 
the metropolis of the heathen world. 

When all these various kinds of evidence have been 
summed up together, and weighed in an impartial balance, 
it may be safely affirmed that there is no extant history 
of the same age, and of similar length, which can claim 
to approach the book of Acts in full, various, and decisive 
proofs of historical veracity. Coins, inscriptions, nautical 
records of ancient and modern times, Jewish and classic 
authors, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the truest and deep¬ 
est chords of the human heart, all conspire to stamp it, 

10 


114 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

from first to last, with the plainest signature of reality 
and truth. 

II. The four Gospels. 

The four Gospels and the book of Acts form two dis¬ 
tinct portions of New-Testament history. The space of 
time is probably just the same, or thirty-three years. Their 
structure, however, is very different. In the former we have 
four parallel biographies, but in the latter one continued 
narrative. The account in the Gospels, also, is confined to 
our Lord’s childhood and his public ministry; and twenty- 
eight years, or six-sevenths of the whole interval, are passed 
by in almost total silence. All is here centered on the' 
person and public work of the Messiah. This simple and 
sublime unity of object distinguishes them not only from 
common histories, but from the other historical books of 
Scripture themselves. They seem only to echo in every 
page the Baptist’s message: “Behold the Lamb of God! 
who taketh away the sin of the world.” 

This character of the Gospels, so different from the book 
of Acts, hinders them from offering numerous points of 
contact with general history. Their theater is Palestine, 
and not the Boman world. The persons and places named 
in them are less numerous, and Josephus is almost the 
only writer with whom a direct historical comparison can 
be made. On the other hand, the concurrence of four 
historians supplies marks of reality of a different and most 
impressive kind. The vital connection, also # of the life of 
Christ, both with all the prophecies of the Old Testament 
and with the later history of the New, forms a peculiar 
and most weighty proof of the deep and intense reality of 
the whole narrative. We may consider the evidence under 
the heads of Time, Place, Persons, Reconcilable Diversities, 
and the double reference to the Old Testament and to the 
later history of the Church of Christ. 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 115 

1. The time to which the Gospels refer is historically 
well defined. The possible variations amount only to three 
or four years at either limit. They are due mainly to the 
fact that Josephus is the only writer who affords very full 
data for comparison, and that some of his statements ap¬ 
pear slightly inconsistent with each other. The limits of 
the date of our Lord’s birth are B. C. 6 and 3, and those 
of the date of his death, A. D. 29 and 33. The direct 
statement of Josephus places the death of Herod between 
the Summer of B. C. 4 and of B. C. 3. But from his men¬ 
tion of an eclipse before that death, many have inferred 
that it took place earlier, or in March. B. C. 4; and others 
that it was three years later, or January, B. C. 1, when an 
eclipse took place about three months, instead of one 
month, before the Passover. The direct statement of Jo¬ 
sephus, being reckoned from a double date of the reign, is 
probably the safest guide. In this case Herod’s illness 
must have lasted the greater part of a year after the eclipse 
of March 13, B. C. 4; and the birth of our Lord, if re¬ 
ferred to December, B. C. 5, would be nearly k year before 
Herod’s death. His baptism would then be in A. D. 27, 
when he would be one or two months above thirty years 
of age; and his first Passover, soon after, would be in the 
forty-sixth year of Herod’s rebuilding the Temple. His 
death, after a three years’ ministry, would be in A. D. 30, 
when Thursday would naturally be the Passover day. 

The notes of time which serve to fix the chronology are 
indirect and various, and lie scattered through the different 
Gospels; and their agreement, with only a very slight de¬ 
gree of uncertainty, is a striking evidence of their common 
truth. The birth of our Lord, and his flight into Egypt, 
are fixed by St. Matthew to the reign of Herod, and the 
return from Egypt to the accession of Archelaus. St. Luke, 
again, places just six months between our Lord’s birth and 


116 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


that of the Baptist, and assigns the annunciation to the 
reign of Herod, and the nativity itself to the time of a cen¬ 
sus, either made by Cyrenius, or before his government of 
Syria began. It places the preaching of the Baptist in the 
fifteenth year of Tiberius, under the government of Pilate, 
states the age of our Lord at his baptism to be about thirty 
years, notices one Passover in the course of his ministry, 
and assigns it indirectly, by one of its parables, a length 
of about three years. The Gospel of St. John makes our 
Lord’s ministry begin very soon after his baptism, at the 
time of a Passover, when the Temple of Herod had been 
forty-six years in building; implies a second Passover at or 
near the time when the cure took place at the pool of Be- 
thesda, and a third about the time of the miracle of the 
five thousand; and specifies visits to Jerusalem at the Feasts 
of Tabernacles and Dedication in the last year. In its no¬ 
tice of the last Passover it seems at first sight to vary from 
the other Gospels, and to place the Jewish festival a day 
later, as referred to the week days; and the solution of 
this difficulty has divided the judgment of critics and ex¬ 
positors from the earliest times. 

Now, if we retain the direct statement of Josephus on the 
length of Herod’s reign, confirmed by the coins of Herod 
Antipas, and the account in Dio of the exile of Archelaus; 
and also accept his date for Herod’s rebuilding the Temple; 
if we suppose that our Lord’s birth was nearly a year be¬ 
fore Herod’s death, as St. Matthew seems to imply; and 
that St. Luke, a writer of Antioch, dated the years of Ti¬ 
berius by a provincial reckoning from his association with 
Augustus in power over the provinces, two or three years 
before his sole reign, as attested by Suetonius; and also 
that our Lord was just about thirty years old at his bap¬ 
tism, the due priestly age; if we assume, further, that his 
ministry lasted three full years, as implied in the parable 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 117 

of the Fig-Tree, and inferred with strong likelihood from the 
feasts in St. John; and, finally, if we expound the state¬ 
ments of St. John on the last Passover, as is both possible 
and reasonable, so as to agree with the joint evidence of 
the first three Gospels; then all these notes of time, so 
widely dispersed, so indirect and various, will agree per¬ 
fectly together, and with the proper age of the moon at the 
time of the Passover, and thus become accumulative evi¬ 
dence to the reality of the events and the historical accu¬ 
racy of the record. Even if we were led, by a different 
view of the testimony of Josephus, to place the death of 
Herod part of a year earlier, or more than two years later, 
which is the limit of possible variation, the agreement will 
be only affected in a small degree, if we raise the cruci¬ 
fixion to A. H. 29, or place it lower in A. I). 33; and in 
every alternative the evidence of reality, from the concur¬ 
rence of notes of time so widely scattered, will scarcely re¬ 
ceive a sensible abatement. 

2. The places named in the Gospels are about fifty in 
number, or half as many as in the book of Acts. They 
include the province of Syria, the tetrarchies or districts 
of Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Trachonitis, Abilene, 
the regions of Perea, of Tyre and Sidon, of Gennesaret, 
Halmanutha, and Decapolis, and the land of Gadara. Be¬ 
sides these, we have the following towns or localities, partly 
with Old Testament, partly with Syriac, and partly with 
classic names: Bethlehem, Bethabara, Bethany, Bethphage, 
Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum, Cana, Nazareth, Nain, 
Jericho, Jerusalem, Sychar in Samaria, and Ephraim near 
the border, Aenon, Salim, Emmaus, Olivet, Arimathea, Ti¬ 
berias, and Cesarea Philippi, Bethesda, Gabbatha, Gol¬ 
gotha, Gethsemane, the Pool of Siloam, and the Brook Kid- 
ron. All these local allusions have only had their truth and 
accuracy confirmed by the assiduous research of modern 


118 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


travelers. Bethany, Nain, the probable site of Capernaum, 
Cana of Galilee, Sychar, and the well of Jacob, have all 
been brought to light once more; or new points of coin¬ 
cidence discovered in the mention of places and scenes al¬ 
ready known. 

3. Besides our Lord and his apostles, about thirty other 
persons are named in the course of the Gospel history. 
These include the two emperors, Augustus and Tiberius, 
Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Herodias, 
Pontius Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas, the Syrian governor 
Cyrenius or Quirinus, and the tetrarchs Philip and Ly- 
sanias. In every one the statement is in agreement with 
the known facts of Roman, Syrian, and Jewish history; 
while in some of them there is a special and minute coin¬ 
cidence. The birth of our Lord is placed under Herod 
the Great; but it lies, from the other notes of time, so 
near to his death, as placed by Josephus, that when the 
latter is removed only half a year backward, some difficulty 
begins to arise; and a shortening of his reign by only 
three years would involve the Gospels in direct contradic¬ 
tion to other facts of history. Again, the return of Jo¬ 
seph into Galilee has a reason assigned, that Archelaus was 
reigning in Judea. The reign of Herod himself was over 
both provinces; but Galilee was separated and placed under 
Herod Antipas as tetrarch, at the accession of Archelaus; 
while the latter, we find from Josephus, gained a character 
for cruelty from the slaughter of the Jews at the very first 
Passover in his reign. The marriage of Herod with Hero¬ 
dias after her divorce from Herod’s brother, is also related 
at some length in Josephus; and was the occasion of a 
great reverse in a battle with Aretas, whose daughter, his 
former wife, was dismissed for her sake. Josephus adds 
that this defeat was looked upon by the Jews as a Divine 
judgment for the murder of John the Baptist, which con- 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 119 

firms, incidentally, another main fact in the first three 
Gospels. The government of Pilate, again, is said to have 
lasted ten years, and his removal by Yitellius is placed at 
the Passover in the year before the death of Tiberius, or 
A. D. 36. That government will thus include the opening, 
as well as the whole course, of the joint ministries of our 
Lord and his forerunner. The high-priesthood of Caiaphas 
yields another coincidence of a similar kind. 

4. The reconcilable diversity of the Gospels, with sub¬ 
stantial unity amidst their variation in details, is a power¬ 
ful evidence of their common truth. The resemblance of 
the first three is so extensive, as to have led many critics 
to the hypothesis that they are varieties of one original 
document. The fourth has all the marks of a later and 
supplementary narrative. All of them agree in their men¬ 
tion of the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ, in their 
allusions to our Lord’s baptism, in the account of the 
miracle of the five thousand, and in the closing scenes of 
the crucifixion and resurrection. The agreement of the 
first three is much more extensive, and includes about 
thirty leading incidents of the Savior’s ministry. Still 
each has its own distinct character, and there is consid¬ 
erable diversity in arrangement and minor details. 

There are two opposite ways in which the testimony of 
witnesses to the same events may be rendered suspicious 
or proved false. Their agreement in-details, or in phrases, 
may be so complete as to seem an artificial result of 
collusion, or there may be extensive and irreconcilable 
contradiction. On the other hand, the combination which 
gives the strongest impression of reality and truthfulness 
is when substantial agreement in the main facts is joined 
with freedom and variety in the tone and method of the 
description, and with slight discrepancy, real or apparent, 
in secondary details. 


120 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Now this is precisely the character of the four Gospels. 
The agreement, in a few passages, is verbally complete, 
and in all the main outlines it is full and clear. In other 
cases, the difference is such as almost to give the impres¬ 
sion of being irreconcilable. The historical unity is so 
apparent that scores of harmonists have endeavored, with 
considerable success, to combine them all into one contin¬ 
uous narrative. On the other hand, the differences have 
occasioned many disputes, among the most skillful harmo¬ 
nists, on the exact order of several events, and the most 
probable method of reconciliation. Side by side with their 
labors, a deep conviction is felt by the most careful critics 
and students, that each Gospel has a plan, style, and pur¬ 
pose of its own, and justly claims the rank of a distinct 
and unborrowed testimony. 

These two opposite tendencies, in the criticism of the 
Gospels, began early, and have continued down to our own 
days. At the close of last century, the document hypoth¬ 
esis was in much favor. From the amount of agreement, 
extending often to the very phrases, an attempt was made 
to resolve the first three or synoptic Gospels into a kind 
of literary patchwork, formed in each case by combining 
three or four shorter documents, no longer extant, in a 
particular way. The principle, after being espoused by 
some eminent critics, was at length elaborated into such a 
complex scheme, to account for all the observed diversities, 
that its triumph proved its ruin. The documents required 
were so numerous, and the conjectural processes so complex, 
as to disprove effectually the hypothesis out of which they 
arose. An opposite view is now in vogue, that the Gospels 
were derived from oral tradition, but in all other respects 
strictly independent of each other. This hypothesis has 
perhaps equal difficulties on the other side. The writer 
of the last, it is plain, must have known of and seen the 


THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 121 


earlier ones, unless we contradict equally its traditional 
authorship and its internal features. Yet the diversity 
here is the greatest of all. There is nothing, then, in the 
smaller differences of the others, to preclude the idea that 
each knew the writing of his predecessors. Whether this 
were the case or otherwise, the' actual measure of diverg¬ 
ence is the same, and effectually disproves the notion of 
any attempt at collusive and artificial agreement. No one 
of them is a mere echo of any other. St. Mark, who 
narrates only'two or three incidents that are not given in 
St. Matthew, is the most original and copious of all the 
four in the minute details. St. Luke, who seems through 
several chapters—chaps, iv-ix—to follow closely in the steps 
of his two predecessors, diverges from them almost entirely 
throughout nine chapters that follow; and thus forms a 
midway transition to the Gospel of St. John, which con¬ 
sists almost entirely of new and distinct matter. But the 
simple fact that two extreme hypotheses have been widely 
maintained, of a common documentary origin, and of total 
and entire independence, is a convincing proof, on the large 
- scale, that there is just that union of substantial agreement 
and partial diversity, which imparts to the concurring testi¬ 
mony of different witnesses the most decisive evidence of 
honesty and truth. 

Viewed in this light, the difficulties of harmonists on 
several points in the Gospels, whatever perplexity they 
may occasion as to the exact nature and extent of the 
inspiration of the Evangelists, are a striking confirmation 
of their historical fidelity. The four distinct witnesses 
whom the Lord has provided for his Church, that its 
faith in the great facts of his life and death may rest 
on a sure foundation, can not by any effort be fused and 
melted down into one. They offer us stereoscopic views 
of their great object. You can not simply superpose them 


122 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


without producing a sense of partial confusion. The lines 
overlap, and seem here and there to interfere; though the 
great resemblance is plain at once. But combine them 
rightly, as views taken from points of sight slightly dif¬ 
ferent, hut of the same glorious object, and the combined 
picture has a depth, massiveness, and solidity which no 
single outline, however full and clear in itself, could ever 
attain. 

A comparison of the Gospels with the predictions of the 
Old Testament, and with the later history of the Church, 
would supply still further evidence of their historical truth. 
The facts they record are so deeply and closely interwoven 
with the whole course of Providence, both in earlier and 
later times, that no amount of violence can rend them 
away without destroying the entire texture of the world’s 
moral history. But it is needless to dwell on further 
proofs, where the marks of truth and reality are so deeply 
impressed on every page. 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 123 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

The Old-Testament history is naturally parted by the 
Exodus, the Building of the Temple, and the Captivity 
into four distinct portions. In inquiring into the evidence 
of its reality, the proper order is to begin with the latest 
and nearest portion, and to ascend successively to those 
which are more remote. 

I. From the Captivity of Babylon to the Birth of Christ. 

Three books of sacred history—Ezra, Nehemiah, and Es¬ 
ther—belong to this fourth period; but their joint length 
barely equals the average of the six books which come 
before them, four of which belong wholly to the third 
period. These three books, however, offer many features 
of great interest in considering the evidence for the genu¬ 
ineness and veracity of the Bible histories. 

1. The first feature worthy of notice in these books is 
their chronological limitation. The fourth period reaches 
from the Captivity or the Return to the Birth of Christ. 
Now, the course of the Bible history is unbroken and con¬ 
tinuous from the Creation to the Captivity, and no blank 
of a single century is found through a range of not less 
than three thousand five hundred years. Even the fifty 
years from the Fall of the Temple to the Return are 
bridged over by historical chapters in Ezekiel and Daniel, 
and by the last verses of Jeremiah, and the book of Kings. 
The thread is resumed after the Return in these three 
books, and continues through a whole century, down to 


124 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. But 
here the canon closes abruptly. There is a space of more 
than four centuries of which no Bible history is given. 
The broken thread is resumed, however, in the New Testa¬ 
ment, and then continues unbroken through two genera¬ 
tions till the arrival of St. Paul at Rome, only seven years 
before the total dissolution of the Jewish polity. The 
books of Maccabees, it is true, belong to the interval; but 
they range over only two generations at most, and also 
it is clear that they never formed a part of the Hebrew 
Scriptures or Jewish canon. 

This break, then, of four centuries is quite unique. It 
is a solitary exception to the continuity of a history which 
ranges through more than four thousand years. Sacred 
prophecy in Malachi, and sacred history in Nehemiah, 
cease almost at the same moment; and both reappear to¬ 
gether, in tenfold effulgence, in the history of St. Mat¬ 
thew’s Gospel and the prophecy on the Mount of Olives. 

This sudden suspension, also, of the Bible history is 
attended by other circumstances which add to its signifi¬ 
cance. The interval is four hundred and thirty years, or 
exactly the same which is noted prominently as closing at 
the Exodus, that conspicuous type of the Christian re¬ 
demption. It is also spanned by two prophecies of Daniel 
in successive -chapters, one of which serves to fix and define 
its length, while the other predicts its political changes so 
clearly as to have suggested the solution, from Porphyry 
down to Dr. Williams and the modern skeptics of Ger¬ 
many, that it must certainly have been composed after the 
events had occurred. Viewed as parts of a Divine plan, 
the relation of all these facts to each other is clear and 
intelligible. Sacred history and prophecy ceased together 
four centuries before the coming of Messiah, that there 
might be a clearer mark of the dying out of the old 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 125 

covenant, and that the dawn of the new—the predicted 
rising of the Sun of Righteousness—might by contrast he 
rendered more deeply impressive. But still the faith of 
the Jewish Church needed support and guidance during 
this long interval of delay. Therefore, while sacred his¬ 
tory and actual prophetic messengers were withdrawn, the 
light of prophecy was given with peculiar clearness. These 
visions of Daniel well supplied the place of direct history. 
The prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, beginning from one 
of the decrees in Ezra and Nehemiah, defined a space of 
sixty-nine weeks, or four hundred and eighty-three years, 
to the appearance of “Messiah the Prince” in his public 
ministry; and the later prophecy of the Scripture o& truth 
described the main events of Persian, Syrian, and Egyp¬ 
tian history, in connection with the Jews, through nearly 
four of the five centuries which make up the whole period 
from the Return to the Nativity. The concurrence of this 
double clearness of prophetic light with the suspense of 
Bible history, both of them facts unique and without a 
parallel, marks clearly the presence of a Divine plan. On 
the skeptical hypothesis with regard to Daniel both facts 
are alike inexplicable. Why should Jewish writers at this 
moment have suddenly ceased to compose their own annals, 
and to add them as fresh books, equally sacred, to the 
earlier histories? Or why should some unknown Jew, in 
the days of Antiochus, instead of openly assuming the 
upright and honorable character of a simple annalist, usurp 
the prophet’s mantle in order to write a mere syllabus of 
Persian and Syrian reigns already past; and then impose 
it on his countrymen, under the name of Daniel, for a 
true prediction, with the audacious title, for a shameless 
forgery, of “the Scripture of Truth?” Nothing can be 
more meager and threadbare than Dan. xi, 2-30, when 
taken for history written after the event; but when viewed 


126 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

as genuine prediction it stands alone, even in the Bible, in 
the clear testimony it yields to the Divine foreknowledge, 
and in its fullness of prophetic light, vouchsafed at the 
exact moment when prophetic inspiration and sacred his¬ 
tory were withdrawn together. 

2. A second feature of these three books is the entire 
absence of the supernatural. No trace of an alleged mir¬ 
acle occurs in any one of them. The old covenant, which 
the earlier hooks of Exodus and Numbers usher in with 
signal wonders, seems here to he indeed waxing old, and 
“ready to vanish away.” This character belongs equally 
to the three hooks, though in other respects there is a sin¬ 
gular .and total contrast. Ezra and Nehemiah are loaded 
with details that seem almost trivial, and their outline ap¬ 
pears fragmentary and unfinished. The hook of Esther, 
on the contrary, has such a striking dramatic unity, that 
the suspicion might easily arise, in some minds, of its being 
a purely-artificial composition. But the entire absence of 
direct miracle is a feature common to it with both the 
others, while the contrast in other respects is complete. 

This negative character, besides the deeper truth it con¬ 
veys with regard to the decay of the Jewish dispensation, 
has plainly an important hearing on the reality and truth 
of the whole Bible narrative. The inspired annals close 
abruptly, hut there is no abruptness in the transition from 
sacred to common history. We have an easy stepping- 
stone by which the mind may rise from the level of ordi¬ 
nary events, and find itself, unawares, in the outer court 
of the temple of God. There is no shadow of a plea in 
these books for doubting their entire truthfulness, because 
of the presence of a miraculous element in the narrative; 
yet, when once received in simplicity, they lead us by the 
hand, upward and onward, by the decree of Cyrus which 
fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah ; by the mention of the 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 127 

Urim and Thummim as a former means of supernatural 
guidance then withdrawn; by the Feast of Tabernacles, re¬ 
ferring back to the history in the wilderness; and, above 
all, by the prayer and song of the Levites to all the earlier 
miracles of the old covenant: “Thou didst divide the sea 
before them, so that they went through the midst of the 
sea on dry land; and their persecutors thou threwest into 
the deep, as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover, 
thou leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar, and in the 
night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way 
they should go. Thou earnest down also upon Mount Sinai, 
and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right 
judgments and pure laws, good statutes and commandments; 
and gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and 
broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their 
thirst.” 

3. Chronological distinctness is a third character which 
is very conspicuous in two of these books, by which the 
main line of the history is continued and brought to its 
close. They occupy just a century under the Persian 
kings, the dates are expressly given, and the reigns can be 
identified, without difficulty, in full agreement with the 
canon of Ptolemy and other authorities. The reign of 
Cyrus dates in the canon from the capture of Babylon, 
B. C. 538, and no place is there left for Darius the Mede. 
But the book of Daniel, which places his reign after the 
capture, almost implies its short duration by the mention 
of his age; and, by a further allusion—xi, 1—implies that 
this short reign was secured by a special Divine interfer¬ 
ence against a strong current of Persian supremacy which 
had now set in. Thus, a comparison of texts restricts it to 
two years. The decree of Cyrus is thus referred to B. C. 
536, his first year in Scripture, but his third in the canon. 
The setting up of the altar is referred to the seventh month 


128 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of the same year, and the foundation of the Temple to the 
second month, or early Spring, of the year following. We 
have, next, a brief mention of two reigns before Darius, 
during which the building was delayed by vexatious oppo¬ 
sition. The beginning of this interval answers to the time 
of Daniel’s fasting and humiliation, when he received his 
last and fullest prophecy of the future history of his people. 
History supplies just two reigns before Darius Hystaspes: 
Cambyses, who, from his cruelty and passion, and Smerdis, 
who, from his character as a Magian impostor, adverse to 
Cyrus and his race, would be likely to reverse the policy 
marked by the decree of restoration. The work is then 
resumed in the second year of Darius, or B. C. 520, and 
the Temple is finished in Adar of the sixth year, that is, 
February or March, B. C. 515; while in the fourth of Da¬ 
rius, agreeably with Zech. vii, 1-5, exactly seventy years 
were complete from the destruction of the former Temple. 
The reign of Xerxes is here passed over, though clearly 
described in Daniel’s prophecy; and the history resumes 
with the mission of Ezra in the seventh of Artaxerxes 
Longimanus, or April, B. C. 458; while his arrival at Je¬ 
rusalem is referred to the first day of the fifth month, or 
August in the same year. The history closes with the 
separation of the strange wives, complete by the first day 
of the next year, March or April, B. C. 457. An interval 
of “ seven weeks and threescore and two weeks,” or four 
hundred and eighty-three years, seems to lead exactly to 
the first month of the Baptist’s ministry, and to the bap¬ 
tism of our Lord, followed by his first Passover; after 
which he began his preaching with the message, “ The 
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 

The book of Nehemiah comes a little later under the 
same reign. It begins with the month Chisleu, of the 
twentieth of Artaxerxes, and continues with the month Ni- 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 129 

san, or the first Jewish month, in the same twentieth year. 
This agrees with the indirect evidence of classic history, 
which refers both the true and nominal accession of Artax- 
erxes to December, and not to the early months of the 
Julian year, in which case these two notices would have 
contradicted each other. The history closes in the thirty- 
second year, or soon after—Neh. xiii, 22—or B. C. 433; 
exactly four hundred and thirty years before the Exodus 
of our Lord himself from Egypt after Herod’% death. 
Thus we have plainly, in these last two books of Bible 
history, a high degree of clearness and consistency in the 
notes of time. 

4. Another feature of these books is the multitude and 
variety of personal and local details. The sacred history 
gives here, at first sight, a strong impression of being 
tediously and superfluously minute. We have, first, an 
enumeration of the vessels restored from Babylon: “ Thirty 
chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver, nine-and- 
twenty knives, thirty basins of gold, silver basins of a 
second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a 
thousand; all the vessels of gold and silver five thousand 
four hundred.” Next follows a list of the captives who 
returned with Zerubbabel, in thirty-three companies of the 
people, each distinctly named and numbered; four com¬ 
panies of priests, and one of Levites, one of singers, and 
one of the porters, thirty-five companies of Nethinims, and 
eleven of Solomon’s servants, of which only the total is 
given—three hundred and ninety-two. We have then two 
Persian degrees, one of Smerdis, and another of Darius 
Hystaspes, given at length. A third decree of Artaxerxes 
follows. The chiefs of the fathers are then named, and 
particulars are given of Ezra’s journey. The minuteness 
of the account is like a pre-Raphaelite drawing. “Then 
we departed from the river of Ahava, on the twelfth day 


130 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

of the first month, to go unto Jerusalem; and the hand 
of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the 
enemy, and such as lay in wait by the way. And we 
came to Jerusalem, and abode there three days. Now, on 
the fourth day was the silver and the gold of the vessels 
weighed in the house of our God, by the hand of Mere- 
moth, son of Uriah the priest; and with him was Eleazar 
the son of Phinehas, and with them Jozabad son of Jeshua, 
and Noadiah son of Binnui, Levites; by number and by 
weight of every one and all the weight was written at that 
time. Also the children of those that had been carried 
away, which were come out of the captivity, offered burnt- 
offerings unto the God of Israel; twelve bullocks for all 
Israel, ninety and six rams, seventy and seven lambs, and 
twelve he-goats for a sin-offering; all a burnt-offering unto 
the Lord.” 

The book closes with a list of those who put away their 
strange wives, in which a hundred and nine names are 
separately given. About double this number occur in the 
book of Nehemiah, which gives copious and minute details 
of the various parties, who joined in rebuilding the walls 
of Jerusalem. The fibers are thus multiplied at the close, 
by which the sacred canon strikes root downward into 
Jewish history. Simplicity, grandeur, dramatic unity seem 
all to be in some measure sacrificed, to secure the highest 
possible assurance of thorough reality and historical truth. 

5. The book of Esther differs widely from these two 
other works. History meets us here in its most ideal, as 
in the others in its most real, form. The poetry of the 
opening description, the doomed race of Haman the Amale- 
kite, the beauty of Esther, the law of the golden scepter, 
the sleepless night of the king, which forms the crisis of 
the drama, and the greatness of Mordecai at the close, all 
conspire to throw around it the air of a dramatic composi- 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 131 

tion. The entire absence of the name of God from first to 
last is another remarkable feature, which only deepens the 
moral significance of the whole. Even the reign to which 
it belongs is not quite clear. It must plainly be later than 
Cyrus, since Persia and Media, not Babylon, are in power, 
and Persia takes the precedence; but opinions are still divi¬ 
ded whether Xerxes or Artaxerxes is the true Ahasuerus. 
An internal coincidence, however, of a delicate and unob¬ 
trusive kind, makes it very probable that Josephus is right 
in referring the narrative to the latter of these two kings. 

But if any should infer, from the dramatic features of 
this book, that it is rather a poetical fiction than a real 
history, there is one plain and decisive argument, besides 
many others, which proves its unquestionable truth. The 
Feast of Purim, on the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar, 
is affirmed at the close to have been appointed, by Esther 
and Mordecai, for a yearly memorial of this great deliver¬ 
ance. This festival was observed in the days of Josephus, 
and has been ever since, throughout the long dispersion 
of the Jewish people. It still keeps its place in their 
calendar, along with the Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of 
Tabernacles, and the Feast of Dedication. No testimony 
could be more decisive and complete to the reality and 
greatness of this national deliverance. 

The sacred history, then, in this closing portion, the 
fourth and latest period of the Old Testament, diverges 
on one side into the greatest minuteness of detail, and on 
the other, into the highest degree of dramatic unity and 
power; but in both alike exhibits the clearest and fullest 
evidence of historical reality and truth. The overruling 
hand of Providence is placed in striking relief, but no 
trace of miraculous intervention is found in it; as if these 
books were designed to form a stepping-stone of transition 
from common history to the miraculous story of the pre- 


182 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


vious works, and every hinderance were purposely removed, 
which might prevent skeptical minds from recognizing at 
once the undeniable truth of the sacred history. 

II. From Solomon to the Captivity. 

This third period occupies a space of about four hundred 
and thirty years from the accession of Solomon to the 
destruction of the Temple, or four hundred and eighty 
years to the fall of Babylon. It occupies the two books 
of Kings, and also the second of Chronicles, and includes 
the period of all the prophets, except Haggai, Zechariah, 
and Malachi. The greater part of it consists of the record 
of the divided kingdom, from the death of Solomon to the 
fall of Samaria. The proofs of its historical reality may 
be ranked under these heads—a clear and distinct chro¬ 
nology; relations with heathen history; the harmony of 
the accounts in Kings and Chronicles; the multiplied allu¬ 
sions in the writings of the prophets; and the internal 
harmonies and marks of truth in the narrative alone. 

1. The chronology of this period, compared with other 
histories, is very full and complete. The notes of time are 
numerous, and occupy about forty verses in Chronicles, and 
eighty in Kings. With one or two very slight exceptions, 
where an error has probably entered in the numbers—such 
as the thirty-seventh instead of the thirty-ninth year of 
Joash, 2 Kings xiii, 10—they are all consistent with each 
other. The interval fixes itself accurately by the data 
which the text supplies, so that the latitude of reasonable 
doubt amounts only to about three years. Baron Bunsen, 
it is true, in his work on Egypt, devotes twenty pages to 
the subject, and professes to have found just as many 
inconsistencies and errors in the notes of time in the sec¬ 
ond of Kings. These, however, are due entirely to his 
own strange incapacity to discern the simple and uniform 
law, which guides the notation of the synchronisms. When 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 133 

this is once perceived, and it is very simple, the alleged 
confusion disappears, and the intervals can he traced, from 
first to last, with the greatest ease. Even Usher and 
Clinton seem to have adopted a less natural view, which 
renders the process of comparison more subtile and labori¬ 
ous, though the final result is hardly affected at all by the 
difference in the two modes of computation. Those cross 
references, which Baron Bunsen seems to regard as full of 
error, and a source of hopeless perplexity, are in reality a 
series of strict and severe tests of the consistency of the 
whole narrative. The most erratic and illogical minds are 
thus almost compelled, in spite of their own instincts, to 
keep close to the true chronology. His own labors are a 
striking example. After contracting the space, in his first 
edition, to ten years less than the true period, he returns 
in the second to the received chronology, with a slight 
variety, which may probably give the true year of Solo¬ 
mon’s accession; though he has only reached this result 
by the help of conjectural emendations, which rest on no 
external evidence, and which falsify a large number of 
the plainest and most consistent notes of time. In fact, 
a chronology which depends on the reckoning of a double 
series of reigns, like those of Israel and Judah, of kings 
sometimes at war, sometimes in alliance, sometimes joined 
in actual affinity, is itself a condensed history, and forms 
by its own consistency a most powerful evidence for its 
own historical truth. 

2. The various references to heathen history in this 
period are another sign of reality, which alone is enough 
to prove the history real. Mention is made in its course 
of Hiram and Eth-baal, or Ithobalus, kings of Tyre; of 
Shishak, Zerah, So, Tirhakah, Necho, and Hophra, kings 
of Egypt or Ethiopia; of Pul, Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser, 
Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, kings of Nineveh; and 


134 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of Merodach Baladan, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil Merodach, and 
Belshazzar, kings of Babylon. These allusions are spread 
over the whole period. Under the reign of Solomon men¬ 
tion is made of Hiram of Tyre and Shishak of Egypt; and 
under his son Behoboam, of Shishak alone. Under Asa 
the invasion of Zerah occurs, and is repelled. Jezebel, 
the wife of Ahab and cotemporary of Jehoshaphat, is the 
daughter of Eth-baal, king of Tyre. Pul, the king of As¬ 
syria, exacts tribute from Menahem in the reign of Uzziah. 
Under Jotham and Ahaz, Tiglath Pileser invades Israel, 
and a second stage of captivity begins. Hoshea makes a 
compact with So or Sevechus, king of Egypt, and is car¬ 
ried away captive by Shalmaneser. Sennacherib invades 
Judea under Hezekiah, and is checked in his career of 
conquest by tidings of the approach of Tirhakah, king 
of Ethiopia. He is slain after his return to Nineveh, and 
Esarhaddon reigns in his stead; to whom, under the name 
of Asnapper, the transfer of the Apharsites and other set¬ 
tlers, the fathers of the Samaritans, is ascribed in the book 
of Ezra. Ezra iv, 2, 9, 10. Merodach Baladan, king of 
Babylon, sends messengers to Ezekiel after the repulse of 
Sennacherib. Pharaoh Necho slays Josiah in the battle at 
Megiddo, and conquers Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar’s reign 
extends through those of Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zede- 
kiah, and extends to the thirty-seventh year of Jeconiah’s 
captivity. Evil Merodach then succeeds to the throne, 
and Belshazzar is in power at the time when the kingdom 
is numbered and finished—when the reign of the Medes 
and Persians begins. It is .thus plain that the links of 
connection with heathen monarchs and dynasties belong to 
the whole period, from its commencement to its close. 

Now, in all these allusions to the history of four or 
five distinct nations—Tyre, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and 
Ethiopia—and to eighteen or twenty kings—all mentioned 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 135 

by name—the palpable agreements are many, while not 
one contradiction or error has ever been shown to exist. 
If there be any defect in this branch of the evidence, it 
is due to the uncertainties and variations of the heathen 
dynasties or annalists, which require us, in some cases, 
instead of treating them as independent witnesses, to ad¬ 
just their uncertainties by the clearer light and stricter 
chronology of the sacred writings. Thus the two lists of 
Egyptian dynasties, from Shishak to Amasis, who answer 
to Solomon and Zerubbabel, as given by Africanus and 
Eusebius, differ from each other, in excess or defect, above 
a whole century, and each falls nearly a century short of 
the true interval. In the proposed restoration of Baron 
Bunsen, six reigns out of twenty-two, and three dynasties 
out of five, have their length altered by mere conjecture, 
and half a century is added to the longer reckoning so as 
to gain the desired result of making the reign of Shishak 
correspond with the Scriptural date of Solomon’s death. 
The recent discoveries in the remains of Assyria and Baby¬ 
lon have added greatly to the strength of this external 
evidence. Monuments disinterred, after being buried for 
ages, and deciphered slowly and laboriously out of lan¬ 
guages of which the very letters were previously unknown, 
have risen up to bear witness to the truth and accuracy 
of the inspired narrative. Thus the exact amount of the 
tribute of gold—thirty talents—imposed by Sennacherib 
on the kingdom of Judah, has been found and deciphered 
from an Assyrian obelisk in the British Museum in full 
agreement with the passage in the book of Kings. The 
name of Belshazzar has in like manner been discovered in 
the monuments of Babylon, and a minute and delicate co¬ 
incidence brought to light. It appears from the decipher¬ 
ment that he was a joint ruler with his own father, who 
seems to be the Labynetus or Nabonadius who fled to 


136 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Borsippa; and this explains the contrast that Joseph was 
made second ruler in Egypt, but Daniel was promised to 
be “the third ruler in Babylon.” 

3. The double account in Kings and Chronicles supplies 
strong additional evidence of the historical fidelity of the 
whole narrative. The writer of Chronicles, it is true, must 
have been familiar with the books of Kings; and many 
passages in both are verbally the same. We can not, 
therefore, ascribe to them the character of two testimonies 
wholly independent. The later account, however, differs 
in several important features from the first. It is confined 
almost entirely to the history of Judah, and overlooks the 
cotemporary events in the kingdom of Israel. A prediction 
of Elijah is recorded, but his miracles and those of Elisha, 
which form one of the main features in the earlier history, 
are entirely unnoticed. No miraculous incidents occur ex¬ 
cept the sudden infliction of leprosy on Uzziah, and the 
destruction of Sennacherib’s army, and possibly the mutual 
destruction of the enemies of Jehoshaphat may be referred 
to the same class. In general, we have a signal series 
of providential mercies and judgments in connection with 
prophetic messages; but signs and wonders, in the strict 
sense of the words, do not appear. 

When we compare the two histories in detail we find 
that the later one gives many incidents of which there is 
no mention in the former, but which cohere intimately 
with the common portion of the narrative. Some of these 
notices are very minute—others refer to events of high 
importance. Of the former class are the notices that 
“Solomon went to Hamathzobah, and prevailed against it,” 
and that “he went to Eziongeber and to Eloth at the sea¬ 
side of the land of Edom.” The book of Kings mentions 
the preparation of the navy, but not the visit itself of the 
king. Again, that Behoboam built “cities of defense in 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 137 

Judah, Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, and Bethzur, 
and Shoco, and Adullam, and Grath, and Mareshah, and 
Ziph, and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, and Zorah, 
and Aijalon, and Hebron, fenced cities in Judah and in 
Benjamin.” That one of these — Lachish—was a fenced 
city in the time of Hezekiah is mentioned both in Kings 
and Chronicles, and is recently confirmed by the Assyrian 
remains. Of the same character is the mention of the 
three chief wives of Behoboam, and of seven of his sons; 
the mention of Adnah, Johahanan, Eliada, and Jehozabad, 
the chief captains of Jehoshaphat; the help given to Uzziah 
“against the Philistines, the Arabians that dwelt in Gur- 
baal, and the Mehunims,” and the towers he built in Jeru¬ 
salem “at the inner gate, and at the valley gate, and at 
the turning of the wall.” Of the other class are the battle 
between Abijah and Jeroboam, with the immense loss of 
the Israelites; the invasion and defeat of Zerah, the Ethi¬ 
opian ; the covenant in the fifteenth year of Asa; the pub¬ 
lication of the law under Jehoshaphat, and his victory 
over the confederates near Engedi; the sin and judgment 
of Jehoram; the repairs under Joash; the murder of the 
prophet Zechariah; the prosperity of Uzziah, and his 
leprosy; the restoration under Ahaz of the captives of 
Judah; the reformation and passover of Hezekiah; and 
the captivity and repentance of Manasseh. On the other 
hand, the histories of Elijah and Elisha, and of the cap¬ 
tivity of the ten tribes, and even most of the names of 
the kings of Israel, are passed by in silence. We have 
thus plainly two distinct testimonies to the portions com¬ 
mon to both histories, and a direct confirmation by this 
means of their historical truth. 

4. Thirteen prophetic books belong to this period, and 
abound throughout with direct or indirect allusions to the 

history. In Isaiah we have mention of Uzziah, Jotham, 
12 


138 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Aliaz, and Hezekiah, and allusions to all the main events 
of the three later reigns. In Jeremiah there is an equal 
fullness of reference to the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, 
Jeconiah, and Zedekiali. Ezekiel dates all his prophecies 
by the years of Jeconiah’s captivity, and refers to the chief 
events of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. The book of Daniel 
ranges throughout the seventy years, from the beginning 
of the Captivity to the third year of Cyrus. In Hosea 
there is mention of Joash, king of Israel; in Amos of Jer¬ 
oboam, son of Joash, and of an earthquake under his 
reign, also mentioned by Zechariah. Obadiah alludes to 
the events at the beginning of the Captivity; Micah to the 
reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; Nahum to the in¬ 
vasion of Sennacherib; Habakkuk to the near approach of 
the Chaldean armies; and Zephaniah to the reign of Jo¬ 
siah, and the judgments then close at hand. These books 
contain, also, nearly thirty chapters of direct history, be¬ 
sides more than a hundred references and allusions to the 
events in Chronicles and Kings. The whole texture, in¬ 
deed, of these prophecies is manifestly founded upon the 
truth of the narrative which the historical hooks of the 
"Bible contain. 

When the external evidence is so abundant and various 
it is needless to dwell on the internal harmonies, indicative 
of truth, which the history itself supplies. The reality of 
these Jewish annals, from Solomon downward, is so clear, 
the links of connection with the prophecies and with hea¬ 
then dynasties are so multiplied and indissoluble, and the 
chronology itself so complete, that skepticism must degen¬ 
erate into insanity before it can venture to deny their sub¬ 
stantial truth. 

In one respect, however, this third period, from Solomon 
to the Captivity, is plainly contrasted with the period that 
follows. It includes, interwoven throughout the narrative, 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 139 

both miracles and miraculous predictions. Such are the 
prophecy of Ahijah the Shilomite, the rending of the altar 
at Bethel, the withering of Jeroboam’s hand and its resto¬ 
ration, the prediction of Josiah by name three centuries be¬ 
fore his birth, the death of the prophet from Judah, the 
famine under Elijah, the widow’s cruse and the raising to 
life of her son, the fire from heaven at Carmel, anl the 
abundant rain after Elijah’s prayer, the vision at Horeb, 
the destruction of the two captains and their fifties, the 
rapture of Elijah, the parting of Jordan, the healing of the 
waters, the raising of the Shunamite’s child, the healing 
of the pottage, and multiplying of the loaves by Elisha, 
the blindness inflicted on the Syrians, the deliverance of 
Samaria, the man raised after Elisha’s death, the cure of. 
Naaman and the leprosy of Gehazi, the leprosy of Uzziah, 
the reversal of the shadow on the dial of Ahaz, and the 
sudden destruction of the Assyrian army. The historical 
footing is just as firm as in the later period; but we are 
plainly within the borders of a sacred history, where the 
special presence of the God of Israel is revealed “in signs 
and wonders according to his own will.” 

III. From the Conquest to Solomon. 

This period, from the entrance of Canaan under Joshua 
to the accession of Solomon and the building of the Tem¬ 
ple, answers to the books of Joshua, Judges, the first and 
second of Samuel, and the first of Chronicles. Two of 
these, however, belong to the last forty years, or the reign 
of David alone. Fo'r the rest of the period, or about four 
centuries—if we accept the date in 1 Kings vi—we have 
only one record of the events, in Joshua, and the book of 
Judges, and the first of Samuel. We have ljere, also, no 
collateral prophecies, though many of the Psalms refer to 
the events of David’s reign, and the book of Ruth is a short 
episode of the time of the Judges. There are no references 


140 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


either to Assyrian, Babylonian, or Egyptian reigns. The 
truth of the Bible history in this period rests, therefore, al¬ 
most entirely on its internal consistency, and on the con¬ 
stant reception of these books, as sacred and authoritative 
records of their own history, by the whole Jewish nation 
from the earliest times. 

Now, first of all, it is plain that these books cohere most 
intimately with those which follow, both in their structure, 
style, and scale of composition, and in their external evi¬ 
dence. They form one continuous series of national Jew¬ 
ish history through a space of nine hundred years. They 
have been received by the Jews, without distinction, as the 
sacred annals of their nation from the death of their law¬ 
giver till open prophecy was withdrawn. Even the scale 
on which the two portions are constructed is the same. 
The periods of time are nearly equal from Joshua to David’s 
accession, and from that of Solomon to the Fall of the Tem¬ 
ple; and the collective length of Joshua, Judges, Buth, 
and the first of Samuel, and again of the second of Chron¬ 
icles, and first and second of Kings is also nearly the 
same. The only difference is that in the earlier period we 
have fuller details of its beginning and its close, and the 
middle is passed over more rapidly. But the general har¬ 
mony, both in the scale and the style of the history, leaves 
instinctively the impression that they are parts of one con¬ 
sistent whole. 

In the next place, these books are national annals of 
such a nature that their national reception as true and 
genuine is inconceivable on the hypothesis of their spurious 
origin. The book of Joshua contains a record of the al¬ 
lotments of the twelve tribes and their separate possessions, 
on which the whole fabric of Jewish law and family inher¬ 
itance would plainly depend. Along with this we have the 
singular economy by which the tribe of Levi were dis- 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 141 

persed among the others, and separate cities with their sub¬ 
urbs allotted for their exclusive possession. The six cities 
of refuge were a still more peculiar institution. It is in¬ 
credible that the origin of such laws, so definite and pecul¬ 
iar, should have been forgotten within a few generations, 
or that there should have been no public and national rec¬ 
ord to confirm and sustain their authority. The first of 
Samuel, again, contains the origin of the kingly form of 
government, and is linked throughout with three names so 
conspicuous and so dramatic in their interest—Samuel, Saul, 
and David—as to exclude the possibility of later fictions 
being accepted for real history. 

The book of Judges is the only one to which these 
proofs of authority do not apply; but here we have 
another quite distinct and equally strong. For this book, 
from first to last, is one record of national sin, humiliation, 
and punishment. It is the very last work by which an 
unprincipled forger could seek to gain public favor, and a 
place among the historians of his own people. From first 
to last it is like an expansion of the later song of Moses, 
a witness against the people on behalf of God, a humbling 
record of repeated , and persevering apostasy. No external 
pledge of its veracity could be more decisive than this 
moral feature which runs through the whole narrative. 

Thirdly, these books abound, even more than those which 
follow them, with geographical details. This results at 
once from the nature of the book of Joshua, as a national 
record of the inheritance of all the tribes of Israel. Nearly 
three hundred names of places occur in it, and a large pro¬ 
portion of them are linked with events locally defined in 
the subsequent history. 

Since, however, the books of Joshua and Judges have 
been assailed, like the Pentateuch, by a school of negative 
criticism, and a late origin and fragmentary character 


142 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


assigned to them, it may be useful to point out briefly, with 
regard to each of them, the strong internal proofs of their 
historical reality. 

Now, the hook of Joshua bears on its face a character 
of unity and completeness. It describes, in succession, the 
passage of Jordan, and four main steps by which the land 
was conquered; tlie destruction of Jericho and of Ai, and 
the defeat of two successive confederacies in the south and 
the north. Theh follows a detailed list or catalogue of 
twenty-nine kings who were subdued. After the conquest 
we have an account of the settlement of the tribes. There 
is, first, a retrospective statement of the territory assigned 
by Moses himself to two tribes and a half on the east of 
Jordan. There is then a description of the boundaries and 
possessions of the two leading tribes of Judah and Ephraim, 
including the other half tribe of Manasseh. We have next 
a statement of the districts allotted to the remaining seven 
tribes, Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naph- 
tali, and Dan. After this are mentioned, in order, the ap¬ 
pointment of the cities of refuge and the selection of the 
forty-eight cities for the Levites out of all the tribes. 
There is, next, the dismissal of the two tribes and a half 
to their own possessions on the east, and the controversy 
which it occasioned, from their erection of an altar of wit¬ 
ness near the fords of Jordan. Last of all, there are the 
two successive interviews of Joshua with the people before 
his death; the first, apparently, at Shiloh, where the taber¬ 
nacle was set up; and the other at Shechem, sacred by the 
memory of their forefather, where the covenant was sol¬ 
emnly renewed. The history closes with three events, all 
marking the termination of a distinct era—the death of 
Joshua, the burial in Shechem of the bones of Joseph, 
which had been brought out of Egypt, and the death of 
Eleazar the high-priest. 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 148 

' Again, the composition seems fixed by internal marks to 
the generation after Joshua's death, and agrees well with 
the supposition that Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, was its 
author. The words, “until we were passed over,” suit best 
with the view that the writer actually took part in the first 
entrance into the land. So again the statement about 
Rahab, “she dwelleth in Israel unto this day,” naturally 
implies that it was written during her lifetime. Her age 
was probably less than fifty at Joshua’s death, and she 
might easily survive him twenty or thirty years. On the 
other hand, the conquest of Leshem by the Danites took 
place after the death of Joshua, as we learn from the fuller 
account in Judges. It was, however, during the lifetime 
of Phinehas, since a still later event, the conflict with the 
Benjamites, was during his high-priesthood. The last event 
mentioned in the book of Joshua is the death of Eleazar, 
whom Phinehas succeeded in that office. 

The separate statements, again, are confirmed indirectly 
in every part of the book by later allusions of the most in¬ 
cidental kind. The first is the charge to the Reubenites 
and Gradites to share the campaign with their brethren— 
i, 12—18—which is referred to again, iv, 12, 13, and cor¬ 
responds with the mention of their dismissal to their own 
possessions at the close of the work. The mention of the 
“stone of Bohan the son of Reuben,” in the border line 
of Judah and Benjamin, seems probably an indirect allu¬ 
sion to the same event. The most natural explanation 
would be, that it was a stone or pillar set up by one of the 
leading Reubenites to mark his participation in the cam¬ 
paign of Israel, since it was placed not far from Gilgal and 
the banks of the Jordan. The history of Rahab and the 
spies is confirmed by the mention of her—vi, 25—as still 
alive when the book was written, and by the statement in 
St. Matthew, that she was married to Salmon, and the 


144 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


mother of Boaz. The place where the miracle was wrought, 
in staying the waters of the Jordan, is said to be near the 
city of Adam, beside Zaretan; and the latter is mentioned 
incidentally in the book of Kings, with reference to the 
brazen vessels in Solomon’s Temple: “In the plain of Jor¬ 
dan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Suc- 
coth and Zarthan.” The place, Gilgal, where the stones 
were set up, and the Israelites encamped after the passage, 
besides other places where it is named, is referred to by 
Micah in a prophetic appeal to Israel after seven hundred 
years: “ 0 my people, remember what Balak king of Moab 
consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him 
from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteous¬ 
ness of the Lord.” Mic. vi, 5. The curse of Joshua upon 
Jericho is mentioned, when it was fulfilled after six hundred 
years, but only in one passing sentence in the book of 
Kings: “ In his days [Ahab] did Hiel the Bethelite build 
Jericho; he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first¬ 
born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son 
Segub, according to the word of the Lord which he spake 
by Joshua the son of Nun.” The sin of Achan is alluded 
to in the genealogy in Chronicles: “The sons of Carmi, 
Achan the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing 
accursed.” The valley of Achor is also mentioned again by 
Hosea, after seven hundred years, and in the tnost incidental 
way: “I will'give her her vineyards from thence, and the 
valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she shall sing there 
as in the days of her youth, when she came up out of the 
land of Egypt.” The mention of the blessings on Mount 
Gerizim—viii, 33—agrees with the high veneration shown 
to it by the Samaritans in later times, and its selection for 
the site of a temple to rival the Temple at Jerusalem. The 
narrative respecting the Gibeonites is confirmed by the later 
mention of their destruction by Saul “in his zeal for the 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 145 


children of Israel and Judah,” and Ahe retribution and 
judgment of the people: “There was a famine in the days 
of David three years, year after year, and David inquired 
of the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul and 
for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.” 
Gibeon is also named as the place where the tabernacle was 
pitched in the times of David and Solomon, before the 
building of the Temple, and where Solomon received a 
vision. 1 Chron. x.vi, 39; 2 Chron. i, 3, 6, 13. Beeroth 
is named among the five cities of the Gibeonites, included 
in the lot of Benjamin. The murderers of Ishbosheth were 
sons of Rimmon a Beerothite, and we have this incidental 
notice: “For Beeroth also was reckoned to Benjamin, and 
the Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and were sojourners there 
unto this day.” No further light is thrown on this inci¬ 
dent, so simply recorded as to speak its own reality. Once 
in Nehemiah, and there only, we find mention of their new 
residence among the towns of Benjamin after the Captivity: 
“The children of Benjamin dwelt at Michmash, and Aija, 
and Bethel, and their villages; at Anathoth, Nob, Ananiah, 
Hazor, Ramah, Gittaim , Hadad, Zeboim.” Of the five con¬ 
federate kings, two of the towns, Jerusalem and Hebron, 
continue to this day; and a third, Lachish, is prominent in 
the history to the time of Sennacherib, and his siege of it 
seems depicted in the sculptures recently found. Bethlio- 
ron, the upper and the nether, are also prominent places in 
the later history, and their site is still identified by travel¬ 
ers. Azekah is named again in the war with the Philis¬ 
tines, who pitched “between Shochoh and Azekah” before 
David’s victory. Libnah, one of the cities destroyed by 
Joshua, occurs in two incidental notices in Kings. First, 
in the reign of Jehoram: “Yet Edom revolted from under 
the hand of Judah unto this day. Then Libnah revolted 

at the same time.” It was a city of the priests—Josh. 

13 


146 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


xxi, 13—and its revolt might be occasioned by Jehoram’s 
open apostasy, through his affinity with Ahab. One wife, 
also, of Josiah was “a daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.” 
2 Kings xxiii, 31. The list of the thirty-one kings in 
Joshua—xii, 9-24—by the admission of negative critics 
themselves, “is either a cotemporaneous, or what is equiva¬ 
lent to a cotemporaneous authority.” 

The confirmations of the local notices that follow, in the 
later history, are too numerous to be specified. The fol¬ 
lowing are a few examples. “The children of Israel ex¬ 
pelled not the Geshurites nor the Maachathites ”—xiii, 13; 
and Absalom “fled for refuge to Talmai son of Ammihud, 
king of Geshur.” Hebron and its environs were given to 
Caleb, and Maon and Carmel are named next to it in the 
list of the cities of Judah; and Nabal was “of the house 
of Caleb,” and is called “a man in Maon, whose possessions 
were in Carmel.” Ziklag is named among “the uttermost 
cities of Judah, toward the coast of Edom southwards;” 
and the history of David’s sojourn there answers perfectly 
to the description. Shochoh and Azekah are joined to¬ 
gether in the list—xv, 35—and also in the account of the 
Philistine army—1 Sam. xvii, 1. Achzib is found in the 
list—xv, 44—and no mention of it recurs till after seven 
centuries, in Micah i, 14, “The house of Achzib shall be 
a lie to the kings of Israel.” The same is true of Mare- 
shah; while Adullam, a third place in the list and in the 
prophecy, occurs repeatedly in David’s history, and its 
caves are known and explored to this day. Giloh is known 
only by one later allusion, but in connection with a strik¬ 
ing and public event. “And Absalom sent for Ahitophel 
the Gilonite, David’s counselor, from his city, even from 
Giloh, while he offered sacrifices.” Gezer is connected 
with two notices, at long intervals, but mutually consistent. 
“Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 147 

in Gezer, but the Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among them.” 
Judges i, 29. “And this is the reason of the levy which 
king Solomon raised—to build the house of the Lord, and 
his own house, and Millo, and the walls of Jerusalem and 
Hezor and Megiddo and Gezer. For Pharaoh king of 
Egypt had gone up and taken Gezer, and burnt it with 
fire, and slew the Canaanites that dwelt therein, and given 
it for a present to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.” The 
cities and villages of the tribe of Simeon are reported, in 
Chronicles, with a very slight change in two or three 
names; but two facts are added, of an extension in the 
days of Hezekiah, when some of them “went to the en¬ 
trance of Gedor, the east side of the valley, to seek pasture 
for their flocks,” and others “went to Mount Seir, and 
smote the rest of the Amalekites that escaped, and dwelt 
there unto this day.” Bethlehem, again, is mentioned in 
the tribe of Zebulun: and besides the contrast implied in 
the two names Bethlehem Ephratah or Bethlehem Judah, 
applied to David’s birthplace, we are told that “Ibzan, a 
Bethlehemite, judged Israel, and was buried at Bethlehem;” 
and his place between Jephthah the Gileadite and Elon the 
Zebulonite shows that a northern Bethlehem is intended, 
while the other is called, for distinction, a few chapters 
later, Bethlehem Judah. 

The marks of unity in the book of Judges are equally 
plain. It begins with a review of the state of the Israelites 
at the time of the conquest, and after Joshua’s death, 
which forms the historical basis of the later narrative. It 
then gives a moral summary of the whole period, which it 
describes as one series of national apostasies, followed by 
merciful deliverance. We have then a brief, but connected 
history of the whole period, from the death of Joshua to 
that of Samson, after whom the double series of prophets 
and kings began, with Samuel, Saul, and David. The 


148 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

book then reverts to tbe earlier part of the whole period, 
and describes the first public entrance of idolatry, in the 
tribe of Dan, and the narrow escape of the tribe of Benja¬ 
min from extinction, through unnatural vice and crime. 
This event is alluded to long after, by the prophet Hosea: 
“They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of 
Gibeah.” “0 Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of 
Gibeah: there they stood: the battle in Gibeah against the 
children of iniquity did not overtake them.” By these 
episodes, the practical aim of the whole narrative is brought 
out at last more clearly into view; that a firmer govern¬ 
ment was needed for the welfare of the people—a king 
whom the Lord himself should provide for them. “In 
those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that 
which was right in his own eyes.” 

The allusions to the history of this period in the later 
Scriptures are not few, and some of them are so indirect as 
to lend it all the confirmation of an undesigned coinci¬ 
dence. The statement about Gezer—i, 29—is confirmed by 
the mention of it as conquered by Pharaoh in the time of 
Solomon. The family of Othniel is traced downward in 
Chronicles for several generations. The overthrow of the 
Canaanites is alluded to in Psalm lxxxiii: “Do unto them 
as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kishon, which 
perished at Endor, and became as dung for the earth.” So 
also the victory over the Midianites: “Make their nobles 
like Oreb and Zeeb, and all their princes like Zebah and 
like Zalmunna.” The triumphal song of Deborah lends its 
language to Psalm lxviii: “Thou hast led captivity cap¬ 
tive.” The truthfulness of the history, in all the local cir¬ 
cumstances of the battle, and the ravine of Kishon, has 
been shown, in a most graphic manner, in a recent work on 
Palestine, “The Land and the Bible.” The successive de¬ 
liverances are appealed to by Samuel, when the people 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 149 

chose Saul for their king. “He sold them into the hand 
of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand 
of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab. 
And the Lord sent Jerubbaal, and Bedan, [Barak,] and 
Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand 
of your enemies.” Again, in Isaiah ix, 4, “Thou hast 
broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, 
the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.” Oph- 
rah, the city of Gideon, is named again in the account of 
the Philistine incursions. “The spoilers went out of the 
camp of the Philistines in three companies, and one com¬ 
pany turned to the way to Ophrah, to the land of Shual.” 
Penuel is mentioned among the cities which were fortified 
by Jeroboam. Succoth, in Joshua, is placed in the valley. 
The Psalmist speaks of “the valley of Succoth,” and the 
brazen vessels of the Temple were cast in the plain “be¬ 
tween Succoth and Zaretan.” “The pillar that was in 
Shechem” where Abimelech was made king, answers to the 
“great stone” by the sanctuary of the Lord which Joshua 
had set up for a memorial, and would seem especially suited 
for the scene of a royal contract. The land of Tob is 
named in the history of Jephthah, as the scene of his exile, 
and the men of Ishtob are among the Syrians hired by 
the Ammonites in the time of David. A great slaughter 
of the Ephraimites, forty-two thousand, was made by 
Jephthah near the fords on the east of Jordan; and a 
wood of Ephraim, probably named from this conspicuous 
calamity of the tribe, since it was not in their territory, is 
the scene of Absalom’s defeat, also on the east of Jordan, 
not far from Mahanaim, or in the land of Gilead. Timnath 
is placed on the border of Judah, near to Ekron, and is 
named, in the account of Samson, as a city of Philistines. 
The expedition of the Danites, after being mentioned briefly 
in Joshua, is recorded more fully in Judges. Beth-rehob, 


150 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


where Laish lay, oecurs in 2 Sam. 1 x, 6, where the Syrians 
of Beth-rehob are hired by the Ammonites. Dan, the city, 
is mentioned in the numbering of the people under David, 
and more generally, in descriptions of the limits of the 
country “from Dan to Beersheba.” The conflict with the 
Benjamites, for the crime of the men of Gribeah, is named 
repeatedly in Hosea, and it was the city of Saul, where 
seven of his sons were put to death, because of his cruelty 
to the Gribeonites. “We will hang them up in Gribeah of 
Saul, whom the Lord did choose.” The resemblance of the 
conduct of the Israelites, when sin was suspected in the 
Beubenites, and when it actually occurred among the Ben¬ 
jamites, illustrates the reality of the whole history. For, 
though separated in appearance by the whole period of the 
judges, the real interval of time was short; since Phinehas, 
who took part in the first message, was still alive, and 
high-priest, when the Israelites assembled at Mizpeh. The 
sense of national unity was still strong, and had not been 
weakened by declensions and apostasies of three hundred 
years. 

The chronology of this period offers some difficulty. If 
all the separate intervals are successive, the total from the 
Exodus to Solomon will be about six hundred years, and 
the incidental mention of four hundred and fifty years for 
the time of the Judges, in Acts xiii, seems to confirm this 
view. On the other hand, 1 Kings vi, 1, assigns four 
hundred and eighty years for the interval from the Exodus 
to the fourth of Solomon, and this seems to agree better 
with the genealogies, and with the mention of three hundred 
years from the conquest to Jephthah’s war with Ammon. 
But even the shorter reckoning disagrees with Baron Bun¬ 
sen’s hypothesis on the Egyptian place of the Exodus, and 
the lengths of the dynasties. He has, therefore, devised 
a singular expedient for setting it aside altogether. The 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 151 

book of Judges, he affirms, is not a history at all, but only 
has a historical basis. “It is an epos, midway between 
mythos, or fable, and genuine history. It is a strictly- 
popular epic in shape, by generations of forty years.” 
When we inquire wherein this poetical character consists, 
we find that it is solely in the substitution of four false 
dates—three of forty and one of eighty years—for what 
he supposes to be the correct intervals—three of seven 
and one of ten years. There is happily a simple test by 
which every one may judge whether the Bible epos or the 
“history” framed out of it by this simple process agrees 
best with “the fundamental principles of historical criti¬ 
cism.” According to Judges v-i-ix, Gideon before his call 
was “the least in his father’s house,” and his eldest son 
Jether was a youth of eighteen or twenty years. The 
country “was in quiet forty years in the days of Gideon.” 
After his victory “he had many wives,” and in all seventy 
children. After his death Abimelech, one of them, slew 
all the others; and Jotham, the youngest, alone escaped, 
and made the celebrated address to the men of Shechem 
from the top of Mount Gerizim. Now, according to Baron 
Bunsen’s revised version, by which the poetical element is 
removed, Gideon survived his victory just ten years; so 
that within that space sixty sons at least must have been 
born to him. Abimelech must have been less than ten 
years old when he slew his infant brothers; and Jotham, 
the youngest, a mere babe when he addressed the Shechem- 
ites from Mount Gerizim, and “then ran away and fled to 
Beer.” Clearly, it is not the Bible narrative, but the 
modern substitute, which has here the best claim to be 
styled an epical fiction. The superiority of the sacred 
text to the learned criticism which assails it, and pretends 
to detect its errors, could scarcely receive a more striking 
illustration. For in all particulars, except the chronology, 


152 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

the book is untouched by the ordeal of criticism, and no 
smell of fire has passed upon it. 

IY. The history of the Pentateuch. 

The books of Moses contain a connected narrative from 
Creation to the conquest of Canaan, and are by far the 
oldest written history now extant. In consequence of their 
antiquity no direct materials for comparison exist, except the 
half-deciphered remains of Egyptian monuments brought to 
light within the last thirty years. The direct evidence of 
their authenticity is of the strongest kind. They have 
been accepted as the writings of Moses by the followers 
of three different and rival creeds — the Christians, the 
Samaritans, and the Jews—as far back in each case as 
their own history extends, or any record of their belief 
can be found. Their character, as the code of laws of a 
whole nation, entering into the minutest details of daily 
life, and involving the whole constitution of the state, and 
the local arrangements of all the tribes, would make a 
late forgery incredible and inconceivable. Apart from its 
record of miracles, and its views of the Divine character 
and holiness, which are so opposed to the whole spirit of 
an unbelieving philosophy, there can be no doubt that its 
claims to the title of true and credible history would have 
been received without the least difficulty, and owned to 
rest upon the most solid grounds. Since, however, the 
tests which can be directly applied are few, and at present 
ambiguous and controverted in the conclusions drawn from 
them, we are bound to apply the maxims of the inductive 
philosophy. These books contain a narrative of the first 
out of six successive periods of sacred history—four in the 
Old and two in the New Testament. The general char¬ 
acter of the series, from first to last, is the same in its 
main features, though with important varieties of a sec¬ 
ondary kind. Each portion seems to grow, by a natural 


HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 153 

development, out of those which precede. The mutual 
references, from first to last, are very numerous. We have 
one summary of the Pentateuch at the close of Joshua; a 
second, of the period of Exodus and the Judges in Samuel; 
a third and a fourth, from Abraham to David, or to the 
Captivity, in the Psalms and Nehemiah; a genealogical 
summary in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke; 
a historical summary from Abraham in the discourse of 
Stephen; a second, from the Exodus in that of St. Paul at 
Antioch; and a final outline from the beginning of Genesis 
to the Captivity, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

Now, in all the five later periods the truth of the sacred 
history, as we have seen, is confirmed by a large variety 
of external and internal evidence. The tests are more va¬ 
rious and abundant in the later portions, and in proportion 
as they are multiplied the evidence of reality becomes the 
more decisive. The period from Joshua to Solomon is in¬ 
ternally consistent, but furnishes hardly any date for com¬ 
parison, either with heathen dynasties or between parallel 
records of the same interval. Where these do occur, in 
the reign of David, in 2 Samuel, and 1 Chronicles, and the 
Psalms, the marks of consistency multiply in the same 
proportion. The. period of the Kings supplies additional 
tests. We have two reports in Kings and Chronicles. 
We have thirteen books of prophecy belonging to the same 
interval, and we have the mention of eighteen or twenty 
foreign kings. The only result is to, multiply the evidences 
of chronological accuracy and historical truth. The next 
period brings us within the early times of classic history. 
The minuteness and copiousness of the details is here car¬ 
ried to an extreme. There is no presence of miracles to 
awaken the doubts of skeptics, and the agreement with the 
best heathen records of the Persian reigns is complete. 
Similar confirmations are found in the history of the New 


154 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Testament, and especially in the book of Acts, its latest 
portion, which belongs to the brightest days of the Roman 
Empire, and is the period in which the elements for com¬ 
parison are the most abundant in historical works, inscrip¬ 
tions, and existing remains. 

The conclusion which results from this course of induc¬ 
tion is plain. Wherever the tests are abundant they con¬ 
firm in the strongest manner the truth of the Bible history. 
We are justified, therefore, and even compelled by the 
laws of sound reason to admit its truth, even in that earliest 
period, where, from its antiquity, it seems to stand alone in 
unapproachable dignity and preeminence. At least, we are 
bound to accept its prima facie claim to be real and genu¬ 
ine history, till counter-evidence can be found, so clear, 
distinct, and decisive, as to outweigh the collective strength 
of all those evidences of simplicity, consistency, and truth 
which meet the eye of the careful student through all its 
later course of fifteen hundred years. How far the revised 
chronology of the time of the Judges, of which a specimen 
has just been given; or hypothesis on the Hyksos period 
of Egypt, which Lepsius reckons at five, Bunsen at nine, 
and De Rouge at fourteen centuries, can affect this counter¬ 
poise, and, separating the early books of the Bible from 
their intimate, organic union with the later history, reduce 
them to epos or mythos, that is, narratives mainly or 
wholly fabulous, may be safely left to the judgment of 
every candid and thoughtful mind. 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


155 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 

Modern rationalism, in its criticisms on the Bible his¬ 
tories, adopts, usually, a laborious process of circular rea¬ 
soning. Unbelief is assumed in the premises, and, of course, 
reappears inevitably in the conclusion. It is affirmed, first 
of all, that miracles and real predictions are incredible and 
impossible. By the help of this doctrine the Bible is dis¬ 
sected, parted into imaginary fragments, resolved into loose 
traditions of some later age, or completely dissolved into 
mere legend. Immense labor is bestowed on this double 
process of dissection or sublimation; and the result is then 
announced that criticism has proved the history to be 
merely common events distorted by tradition, or the cloth¬ 
ing of some abstract ideas of truth. This is the course 
adopted, alike by Strauss in the New, and Ewald and many 
others in the Old Testament. The same assumption is 
made openly in both cases, that a supernatural revelation, 
accompanied by miracles and prophecies, is “neither a fact 
nor a possibility.’’ From infidel premises, of course, there 
can be reached no other than an infidel conclusion. 

There are, on the contrary, only two questions which 
need an affirmative reply, that our acceptance of the Scrip¬ 
tures as a Divine revelation may be a reasonable faith. 
Has the Bible, setting aside, in the first place, the super¬ 
natural elements involved in it, every other sign and evi¬ 
dence of historical truth? And next, do the miracles or 
prophecies themselves agree in character with their alleged 


156 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


design as the credentials to a series of Divine revelations? 
The former question has now been briefly answered. It re¬ 
mains to inquire, next, whether the miracles satisfy the 
required conditions. These may be reduced, perhaps, to 
these four heads: a wise parsimony, general publicity, a 
consistent plan, and a moral purpose. 

I. Miracles, to fulfill their great object of attesting and 
confirming messages from God, must retain an unusual and 
exceptional character. When they become habitual with 
any regular law of recurrence, they cease to be miraculous, 
and only add one more element to the immense number of 
natural laws. If they become frequent, but remain ir¬ 
regular and unaccountable, they will cease to startle or 
surprise, or fulfill any moral purpose, and will come to be 
classed with shooting-stars, or similar unexplained phe¬ 
nomena of the natural world. There is no conceivable 
limit to the invention of mere legends; but real miracles, 
it is plain, have strict and severe conditions to which they 
must conform. If too obscure and isolated, they will be 
insufficient for their professed object. If too numerous or 
constant, they forfeit the character of signs and wonders, 
and must lose a great part of their influence over the minds 
of those who may witness them. A wise parsimony is one 
main feature which must be expected, therefore, to charac¬ 
terize their actual occurrence. 

Two causes have tended to create a false impression with 
reference to the number of the miracles in the Bible his¬ 
tory. The first is its extreme compression, and the vast 
period of time which it embraces from first to last. The 
other is the religious tone of the whole narrative; so that 
common events, where there is no proper miracle, are 
ascribed habitually to the power and providence of God. 
When these two circumstances have been duly weighed, it 
will be seen, with surprise, how sparing, according to the 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


157 


Bible itself, has been the use of miracles in the Divine 
economy. For the question is not what proportion they 
bear to the facts expressed in the record, but to those 
which are implied in it. Even without any inspired tes¬ 
timony, we know that the course of nature must have con¬ 
tinued from day to day, and from generation to generation. 
But if miracles are declared to attest and confirm Divine 
messages, the mere omission and silence of the record 
amounts almost to a full proof of their non-occurrence. 

The first period of Bible history reaches from the Crea¬ 
tion to the Deluge, and occupies a space of more than 
sixteen hundred years. The record is very brief, but we 
may fairly assume, for the reason just named, that the 
chief events really miraculous have been included. Now, 
these are only five or six in number: the temptation of 
the serpent in Paradise; the expulsion of Adam and Eve, 
with the cherubic sword of fire at the east of the Garden; 
the vision to Cain after Abel’s sacrifice; the translation of 
Enoch; the mixture, perhaps, of the sons of God with the 
daughters of men, and birth of the Nephilim; and, lastly, 
the Deluge itself, and its attendant circumstances. Six 
instances of miraculous interference — three at the very 
beginning, two during the course, and one at the close— 
of nearly two whole millennia of the world’s history, are 
surely no lavish and extravagant amount of supernatural 
interference. 

The second period reaches from the Flood to the Descent 
into Egypt, and is a space of six—but according to the 
Septuagint of fourteen—centuries. Only three main events 
of a public or a national kind occur in it which are mira¬ 
cles, or quasi-miraculous: the confusion of tongues at the 
Tower of Babel; the destruction of the Cities of the Plain; 
and the dreams of Pharaoh, with the seven years of plenty 
and seven of famine. Even of these the last belongs less 


158 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

naturally to miracles than to supernatural prophecy. But 
since the foundations of a new economy were now being 
laid, there is a considerable number of visions recorded of 
a more private and personal kind. We meet with about 
ten instances in the life of Abraham, three or four in that 
of Isaac, and eight in that of Jacob. Most of them are 
simply dreams or visions, and only three or four involve a 
distinct angelic appearance. This, also, is a frugal pro¬ 
vision of signs and wonders for the first foundation of an 
economy of grace, by which all the families of the earth 
were to be blessed, and which was to endure to a thousand 
generations. 

The third period is that of the Exodus and the Conquest, 
and lasted about forty-five years. It was the season when 
the Law was given, and written revelation first began. It 
forms, therefore, an exception to the character of the pre¬ 
vious and the following periods, with regard to the number 
and frequency of the signs and wonders which attested the 
new economy, and that written law which was to he the 
foundation of all the later messages of God. All the other 
miracles of the four thousand years of the Old Testament 
are scarcely so numerous or so striking as those which are 
crowded into the limits of this single generation, though 
comparatively modern in its date; since Abraham, and not 
Moses, is about midway in the Old-Testament history. 

The fourth period, from the Conquest to Solomon, occu¬ 
pies considerably more than four hundred years. But the 
miracles recorded in its course are comparatively few. The 
chief are: the angelic vision at Bochim; the call of Gideon; 
the double miraculous sign of the fleece; the angelic vision 
to Manoah; the wonders of Samson’s strength, and its loss 
when his vow was broken; the vision to Samuel when a 
child; the judgments on the Philistines and the men of 
Bethshemesh; the prophesying of Saul; the thunder and 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


159 


hail after Samuel’s rebuke of the people; the appearance 
of Samuel to Saul after his death; and the infliction of the 
pestilence and its removal; or scarcely more than twelve 
through a period of nearly five centuries. 

In the fifth period, from Solomon to the Captivity, be¬ 
sides the number of prophets who were raised up, and 
whose writings are part of the canon, the direct miracles 
are more numerous. About forty distinct examples of them 
are recorded during this interval of four hundred and thirty 
years, and two or three others in the history of Daniel at 
Babylon. The signs and wonders approach in their strik¬ 
ing character to those of the Exodus; but they are spread 
over a longer interval, while the others are all concentrated 
within one instead of ten or twelve generations. In the 
last period of the Old Testament, after the Return, and till 
the Birth of our Lord, there is an entire absence of all 
recorded miracles through more than five hundred years. 

The whole range of New-Testament history is only sixty- 
six years, or two generations. It begins with miracles in 
the narrative of our Lord’s infancy, and they are found in 
the very last chapter, after the shipwreck of the apostle, 
and before his arrival at Rome. They do not, then, shrink 
or disappear from the history, when it comes into contact 
with the broad daylight of Greek and Roman civilization. 
On the other hand, there are twenty-eight years of this 
period, or nearly one half of the whole, which are passed 
by in silence, and where the absence of miracles is clearly 
implied. This same feature, also, continues to mark the 
ministry of the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. The con¬ 
trast is brought out plainly in the fourth Gospel in the 
words of the Jews, “John did no miracle, but whatsoever 
John spake of this man was true.” 

Thus, on a review of the whole, we find that the Bible 
itself teaches clearly that miracles were a rare exception, 


160 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and not the ordinary rule of Divine Providence, and this 
even among the chosen people. From the purpose expressly 
assigned to them we may infer, with great probability, that 
all such departures from the usual course of nature, of a 
signal character, would be put on record; and the whole 
number may be rather more than one hundred throughout 
the course of four thousand years from the fall of Adam 
to the coming of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. 
The first condition, then, of true miracles, a wise parsi¬ 
mony in their exhibition, is clearly fulfilled in the Bible 
history. 

II. Again, miracles, in order to fulfill their office, as 
proofs of a Divine message or commission, require a char¬ 
acter of publicity. To use the words of St. Paul before 
Agrippa, it would contradict their great object, if they 
were “done in a corner,” and there were, no adequate wit¬ 
nesses of their reality. 

This condition, again, is satisfied in the highest degree 
by the main body of the miracles, both of the Old and 
New Testament. The Flood, the confusion of tongues, the 
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plenty and famine 
of Egypt, were events of the most public kind, and on the 
largest scale. A public assertion of them, unless very 
remote in time, would involve a speedy and complete expo¬ 
sure of fraud and falsehood. The plagues of Egypt, the 
pillar of cloud and fire, the daily manna, the passage of 
the Red Sea, the supply of water from the rock, have all 
the utmost possible degree of publicity. The same is true 
of the passage of the Jordan, and is there additionally 
striking because of the memorial appointed at the time, to 
be a public testimony of the occurrence to later genera¬ 
tions. The same character applies to several of Elijah and 
Elisha’s miracles, and to the later overthrow of the Assyr¬ 
ian army. In the New Testament it is the common feature 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


161 


of all our Lord’s miracles, and most of those of the apostles. 
The appeal is repeatedly made by our Lord himself, as well 
as his disciples, to this character of the miraculous works. 
John xv, 22-24; v, 36; xi, 47, 48; xii, 37; xviii, 20; 
Acts ii, 22; iii, 16; iv, 21, 16; v, 16; x, 37, 38; xix, 12; 
Rom. xv, 19. 

But while this character of publicity belongs to the 
Bible miracles, as a whole, there are many exceptions in 
which they are exhibited in the light of a special privilege, 
and witnessed by a few only. Such were the visions to the 
three patriarchs; the appearance in the bush to Moses; the 
messages of the angel to Gideon, and afterward to Manoah 
and his wife; the support of Elijah by ravens, and again 
by the widow of Zarephath; and some others in the Old 
Testament. In the Gospels we see that our Lord, in several 
cases, enjoined silence on those who were healed, or chose 
out a few witnesses only. Thus three apostles alone were 
allowed to be present at the raising of Jairus’s daughter, 
and at the Transfiguration; and the blind man at Bethsaida 
was led aside out of the town before his eyes were opened, 
and then charged not to tell it to any one in the town. 
The resurrection of our Lord holds in this respect a middle 
place. The number of witnesses was large, for “he was 
seen of above five hundred brethren at once;” and the 
appearances were numerous, for no less than ten are dis¬ 
tinctly put on record, and they reached through an interval 
of forty days; but the privilege was reserved, in every case, 
for disciples alone. It is clear, then, that a second law 
intersects, and in some cases supersedes, the general rule 
of publicity; and that the moral aspect of such manifesta¬ 
tions, as a special privilege which must not be wasted upon 
senseless and stubborn minds, mingles with and modifies 
their fundamental character, as “a sign to them who do 
not believe.” 1 Cor. xiv, 22. 


14 


162 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

III. A third feature, which may be expected to distin¬ 
guish real miracles, designed to fulfill some great object of 
the Divine government from the mere chance inventions of 
falsehood, or a fortuitous series of mere legends, invented 
by the caprice of imaginative minds, is the presence of a 
consistent plan in their actual distribution and occurrence. 

It is common with skeptical writers to represent mira¬ 
cles, as maintained by the advocates of Christianity, to be 
“something at variance with nature and law,” “arbitrary 
interposition” and acts of mere caprice, in “marvelous dis¬ 
cordance from all law.” But this is a gross misconception. 
The term law, instead of being confined exclusively to 
physical relations, is borrowed from a higher field of 
thought—the deliberate acts of intelligent wills—and is 
only transferred- by analogy to the mere regularity of 
physical changes. Moral laws have a better claim to the 
title than the physical; the latter have borrowed it from 
them, and are merely, so to speak, undertenants at will. 
The highest and noblest kind of law of which we can have 
a conception consists of the moral and spiritual maxims by 
which the Supreme Lawgiver, the only wise God, disposes 
his own acts in the government of the creatures he has 
made. Viewed in this light, while miracles are either real 
or seeming infractions of some physical law of material 
sequence, they are, in every case, fulfillments of a higher 
law of God’s moral government; which may be discerned 
in them, more or less clearly, when the understanding has 
been purified by faith and prayer, and has learned to medi¬ 
tate with reverence on the ways of the Most High. 

The question between unbelief and Christian faith seems 
capable, then, of being brought here to a distinct and 
definite issue. If alleged miracles are the mere inventions 
of imposture, or the dreams of inventive fancy, we might 
reasonably infer that they would be ascribed most plenti- 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


163 


fully to periods most remote from historic knowledge, and 
diminish gradually as we come within the region of au¬ 
thentic history, tested by collateral evidence and a well- 
defined chronology. On the other hand, if they are the 
real credentials of Divine messages, we should expect them 
to abound at marked eras of revelation, when there is some 
conspicuous unfolding of the Divine will; and to be more 
sparingly exhibited in those intervals, when there is merely 
a continuation of former degrees of light, and no sign of 
any new message from God to man. 

Now, it will be plain, on the least inquiry, that this latter 
character, and not the former, belongs to the whole series 
of miracles which the Bible records. Three or four mirac¬ 
ulous events marked the close of the brief economy of 
Paradise, and introduced the sixteen centuries of the ante¬ 
diluvian world. One miracle alone occurs during their 
long course—the translation of Enoch; for the marriage of 
the sons of God with the daughters of men is either simply 
a natural event, or a marvel of sin, and not an interference 
of God. The Deluge and its attendant wonders ushered in 
a new dispensation, and a formal covenant with mankind in 
their new head. Two signal acts of judgment mark the 
long period from the Flood to the Exodus, when iniquity 
had reached its hight, in the building of Babel, and the 
Cities of the Plain; but all the other wonders are of a more 
private kind, connected with the persons of the three pa¬ 
triarchs alone, in whom the foundation was laid for all the 
later revelations of the Divine will. But with the Exodus 
a new dispensation began. The revealed will of God was 
now, for the first time, embodied in a written and perma¬ 
nent form. The books of Moses, which were written by 
the great lawgiver of the Jews, form the key to all their 
later history, and are the basement story of the whole 
edifice of revealed religion. Here, then, we meet in the 


164 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


sacred narrative with a profuse display of miraculous 
agency, contrasted equally with earlier and with later ages. 
This contrast is boldly drawn out in the law itself. “For 
ask now of the days which are past, which were before 
thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, 
and from one side of heaven unto the other, whether there 
hath been any such thing as this great,thing is, or hath 
been heard like it. Did ever people hear the voice of God 
speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, 
and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a 
nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, 
by signs, by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, 
and by a stretched-out arm, and by great terror, according 
to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before 
your eyes?” This era of marvels lasts throughout the 
forty years of the Exodus, till Jordan is crossed, the book 
of the law complete, and the chosen people have entered 
into their promised inheritance. Its close is then hardly 
less marked than its commencement. The manna ceases as 
soon as the Jordan is passed. After the conquest is com¬ 
plete, except the solitary message of rebuke by the angel 
at Bochim, we have two whole centuries, to Gideon, in 
which no trace of a miracle is found, and only one pro¬ 
phetic message, that of Deborah to Barak. The few mira¬ 
cles that come later are of a personal kind, or messages to 
individuals, to fit them for some special work or service. 
Two public miracles occur, at intervals, in the later half of 
the period between the Conquest and Solomon, and each of 
them is connected with a main event in the tabernacle wor¬ 
ship of Israel. The first was the rescue of the ark from 
the Philistines, which was never again restored to the 
tabernacle at Shiloh; and the other was the pestilence, 
which issued in the designation of a new site on Mount 
Moriah for the temple of God. 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


165 


But as soon as the Theocracy, under the law, began to 
wane, and new revelations were to be given, permanently, 
by prophets to complete the old covenant, and link it with 
the Gospel that was to follow, not only prophetic messen¬ 
gers are multiplied, but public miracles reappear. Their 
place is not found amidst the dimness of uncertain history, 
or an obscure chronology, but precisely where the annals 
of Israel and Judah dovetail into each other with recur¬ 
ring notes of time, and link themselves with the records of 
Tyre, Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon. A signal prophecy 
by Ahijah the Shilonite, and three signal miracles in con¬ 
nection with the prophet from Judah, usher in the first 
separation of the kingdom of Israel, and are like an earnest 
of the new era that was to begin. In the two generations 
of Elijah’s and Elisha’s ministry nearly forty miracles are 
recorded in Chronicles and Kings. A series of prophetic 
messages was thus publicly inaugurated, which reached 
from Jonah, the earliest, a cotemporary of Elisha, to Jere¬ 
miah and Ezekiel at the time of the Captivity; when it 
was sealed once more by the two signal miracles, in which 
the faith of Daniel and his companions “stopped the mouths 
of lions, and quenched the violence of fire,” in the interval 
between the Captivity and the Beturn from Babylon. 

After this return the Sinaitic covenant was waxing old, 
and even the code of Old-Testament prophecy was nearly 
complete. Three shorter books of prophecy sustained the 
faith of the remnant who had been restored to Judea in a 
time of weakness and Gentile opposition, and renewed the 
promise of brighter days at hand. But miraculous inter¬ 
ference is entirely withheld. No outward miracle is found 
in these last books, of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, 
Zechariah, and Malachi. Signs and wonders first, and 
very soon the gift of prophecy itself, are withdrawn, 
through a long space of five hundred years. The old dis- 


166 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


pensation, with its code of Divine messages, was complete, 
and the fuller light of the Gospel was not come. 

When this time of waiting was gone by, a series of mar¬ 
vels accompanies the dawning of a new dispensation, and 
ratifies the messages of the Gospel. They begin with the 
birth of our Lord, but their chief development attends the 
opening of his public ministry. Amidst the fullest light 
of classic literature, and in the hight of the Roman domin¬ 
ion, when the whole civilized world was linked by perpetual 
and daily intercourse, we are suddenly confronted once 
more with “signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds,” less 
startling and terrible than those which sealed the sterner 
messages of the law, but still more numerous and varied, 
and reaching, like the others, through a space of forty 
years and upward, from our Lord’s baptism to the very 
close of the Jewish polity. Their reality is attested, not 
only by the simplicity and truthfulness of the record, but 
by the admission of Celsus, Porphyry, and of the unbeliev¬ 
ing Jews, and by their moral power in the formation of 
the Christian Church, and its growth and spread through 
successive ages. They are the rock on which it is built so 
firmly that the gates of hell have never prevailed for its 
overthrow. But when once the Church is founded, and the 
new dispensation of the Gospel established throughout the 
breadth of the Roman Empire, the sacred canon is brought 
to a close, and miracles, beyond that limit, either suddenly 
cease, or melt away insensibly, with the removal of the 
first believers and apostolic converts, and “fade into the 
light of common day.” 

The miracles of the Bible, it thus appears, are not scat¬ 
tered confusedly throughout the whole period, as, if they 
were due only to the accidents of legend-weaving, we should 
expect them to be. They follow a manifest law in their 
distribution, no less than the planets of the solar system in 


THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 


167 


their settled orbits. They are grouped mainly around two 
great centers, the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ, 
the two known and essential components in one great, pro¬ 
gressive scheme of revelation. An important but secondary 
series attends and introduces the teaching of the prophets, 
the connecting link between the two dispensations. When 
we add to these a few acts of solemn judgment, the Flood, 
the Confusion of Tongues, the Destruction of Sodom, the 
overthrow of the Assyrian host, and more private messages 
or visions to the three patriarchs, and a few judges and 
kings, we have nearly exhausted the whole range of re¬ 
corded miracles. Every feature of their arrangement con¬ 
firms the constant faith of the Church, that they are neither 
the inventions of imposture, nor the dreams of wayward 
fancy, nor unaccountable freaks of blind chance; hut cre¬ 
dentials, appointed by the Only Wise God, to confirm and 
ratify the authority of his own messages of holiness and 
grace to the children of men. 

IY. The last feature which marks the Bible miracles, 
and severs them widely from the idle tales of marvels with 
which a skeptical criticism would confound them, is the 
presence throughout of a moral purpose. It is not merely 
true that they are shown by the law of their distribution 
to be the seals and certificates of the messages of God. 
They form themselves one part of the message which they 
seal. 

This moral character of the miracles of the Bible has 
been often observed, and unfolded by several writers with 
rich and abundant evidence of its truth. It is the less 
needful, then, to dwell on it here at any length. The 
miracles of our Lord, with scarcely an exception, are para¬ 
bles also. Some deep spiritual truth shines out through 
the supernatural history. They are not, as the mythical 
theory pretends, mere ghosts or unembodied ideas, clothed 


168 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

with a shadowy vail of fiction. They have a body, real 
and true; hut it is a spiritual body, like that which is 
promised to the children of the resurrection, translucent 
in every part with the powerful impress and energy of the 
living truth within. The plagues of Egypt partake of the 
severity and holiness of the legal dispensation. The works 
of Christ are gracious and gentle, though surpassingly won¬ 
derful, and answer well to the grace which was poured into 
his lips, and forms the essential spirit, the distinguishing 
glory, of the Gospel. There is a Divine harmony of char¬ 
acter between the signs and wonders themselves, the healing 
of the sick, the unstopping the ears of the deaf, and opening 
the eyes of the blind, the stilling of the storm and tempest, 
and the truth which all of them were given to confirm and 
ratify—“the Gospel of the grace of God.” 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 169 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PROPHECIES OF THE.OLD TESTAMENT. 

Christianity, as a public message which claims the 
faith and obedience of mankind, rests evidently on a double 
foundation—the miracles of our Lord and his apostles, and 
the fulfillment of earlier prophecies of the Old Testament 
in the history of Christ, and the early progress of the 
Gospel. The appeal to the miracles is conspicuous in every 
part of the New Testament. “If I do not the works of 
my Father,” our Lord said to the Jews, “believe me not; 
, but if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works.” 
And to his disciples: “If I had not done among them the 
works which no other man did, they had not had sin.” 
Nicodemus, even in the first twilight of bis faith, had 
already learned the same lesson: “ Rabbi, we know that 
thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do 
these miracles which thou doest except God be with him.” 

But the appeal to the fulfillment of prophecy is no less 
frequent, both in the lips of our Lord himself, and in the 
teaching of his apostles. It is, equally with the miracles, 
made the ground of a direct and earnest claim that Jesus 
of Nazareth should be received as the true Messiah, and 
the Gospel believed to be the word and message of God. 
If this appeal be groundless and delusive, then Christianity, 
it follows by necessary consequence, is a system of delusion. 
Whatever elements of pure morality it may seem to con¬ 
tain, these too must be deceptive; since it would come with 
a lie in its mouth, to claim submission and reverence in the 


170 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


name of a God of truth and holiness. Whoever denies the 
reality of these predictions ceases, de facto , to be a Chris¬ 
tian. For a Christian means a disciple of Christ; and 
those can not be disciples of our Lord who deliberately 
contradict and set aside many of the clearest and most em¬ 
phatic sayings which proceeded from his lips. Christianity, 
it is evident, as a reasonable faith, nay, as a scheme of 
high morality, and not of false pretenses, must stand or fall 
with the acceptance or rejection of the fulfillment of Old- 
Testament prophecies, in the life, death, and resurrection 
of the Lord Jesus. 

Let us review, first, the passages in which this claim is 
distinctly made. 

1. Matt, xi, 10: “For this is he of whom it is written, 
Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall 
prepare thy way before thee.” 

This prophecy of Malachi is here distinctly asserted by 
our Lord to belong to the Baptist, his own forerunner. It 
is implied with equal clearness that the following clause is 
a prediction of his own presence among the Jews, and in 
the Jewish Temple: “And the Lord whom ye seek shall 
suddenly come to his Temple, even the messenger of the 
covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith 
the Lord of Hosts.” 

2. Matt, xii, 39, 40: “ An evil and adulterous generation 
seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, 
but the sign of Jonas the prophet: for as Jonas was three 
days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the 
Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart 
of the earth.” 

Here we have not only a prophecy of the resurrection 
on the third day, which lodged in the memory even of 
the unbelieving Pharisees — Matt, xxvii, 63—but a dis¬ 
tinct assertion by our Lord that the strange and unusual 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 171 

history of Jonah, which was a sign to the Ninevites, was 
a vailed prediction of his own resurrection from the dead. 
The same statement is repeated once more—Matt, xvi, 4. 

3. Matt, xxi, 42: “Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never 
read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders re¬ 
jected, the same is made the head of the corner: this is 
the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes? There¬ 
fore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken 
from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits 
thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be 
broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him 
to powder.” 

Here our Lord \not only affirms that the verse in Psalm 
cxviii is a distinct prophecy of his rejection by the Jewish 
rulers, but infers from it the truth, soon fulfilled, of their 
own expulsion from the covenant of God, attended by 
heavy judgments. The apostle, who was present at the 
time, twice repeats and confirms the saying of his Lord. 
Acts iv, 11, 12; 1 Pet. ii, 7, 8. 

4. Matt, xxii, 41, 46: “If David, then, call him Lord, 
how is he his Son?” The words of Psalm cx, 1, are here 
affirmed to be a prophecy of the exaltation of Messiah, 
which was fulfilled in the twofold nature of our Lord and 
his future exaltation to the throne of God. 

5. Matt, xxiv, 15, 16: “When ye see the abomination 
of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in 
the holy place, (whoso readeth let him understand,) then 
let those which be in Judea flee into the mountains.” 
Here, when the words are compared with St. Luke, our 
Lord teaches his disciples that one of Daniel’s predictions, 
instead of being written after the event in the time of An- 
tiochus, was a true prophecy of desolation to be soon in¬ 
flicted on Jerusalem by the Roman armies. 

6. Matt, xxiv, 30: “And they shall see the Son of man 


172 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great 
glory.” These words are a plain reference to Daniel vii, 
13, 14, and a distinct claim by our Lord to be the Son of 
man, of whom Daniel had prophesied, and announced his 
everlasting dominion and glory. 

7. Matt, xxvi, 23, 24: “He answered and said, He that 
dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall be¬ 
tray me. The Son of man goeth as it is written of him.” 

We have here our Lord’s declaration that his sufferings 
were the express subject of prophecy. But the connection 
shows that he refers immediately to Psalm xli, 9, and 
affirms its fulfillment in his betrayal by one of his own dis¬ 
ciples. 

8. Matt, xxvi, 28: “For this is my blood of the new 
covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” 
The declaration here, though indirect, is not the less deci¬ 
sive, that Jeremiah xxxi referred to our Lord’s sacrifice on 
the cross, and to the Gospel covenant which it sealed. 

9. Matt, xxvi, 31: “ Then saith Jesus unto them, All 
ye shall be offended because of me this night; for it is 
written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the 
flock shall be scattered abroad.” 

No statement could be plainer than this. The prophecy 
in Zechariah, our Lord tells his disciples, made it certain 
that they would abandon him in the hour when he was to 
be smitten, and lay down his life for the sheep. 

10. Matt, xxvi, 53, 54: “Thinkest thou that I can not 
now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me 
more than twelve legions of angels ? But how, then, shall 
the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” 

Here, also, nothing can be more distinct than our Lord’s 
assertion, rendered stronger by its interrogatory form. 
The prophecies so truly foretold his sufferings as to make 
it essential for their truth and the faithfulness of God, that 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 173 

he should yield himself up without resistance into the 
hands of his enemies. The Scriptures would have failed 
and been falsified unless he suffered. The Evangelist pres¬ 
ently repeats and reechoes the same doctrine: “ But all this 
was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be ful¬ 
filled.” 

11. Matt, xxvi, 64:■“ Hereafter ye shall see the Son of 
man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven.” Our Lord has once before applied the 
description in Daniel. to himself, in his discourse to the 
disciples. He here repeats the same before the Sanhe¬ 
drim. The saying, for which he was adjudged to be 
worthy of death, was simply a claim to be the express ob¬ 
ject of this prediction. If Daniel vii were merely a pre¬ 
tended prophecy, or referred to some one else, there seems 
no escape from the conclusion that our Lord was a de¬ 
ceiver, and his condemnation a righteous sentence. 

12. Matt, xxvii, 46: “About the ninth hour Jesus cried 
with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that 
is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” 

This exclamation, if it stood alone, might be explained 
as a mere adoption of the Psalmist’s words, because they 
suited his present experience of suffering; but when we 
compare them with the taunt in verse 43, which is a quo¬ 
tation from the same Psalm, and the quotation just before 
by the Evangelist in verse 35, they clearly imply a con¬ 
scious appropriation by our Lord, on the cross, of the whole 
Psalm, as a distinct prophecy both of his inward experience 
and outward shame. 

13. Luke iv, 17, 21: “And he began to say unto them, 
This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” The 
prediction in Isaiah Ixi, 1, is here expressly referred by our 
Lord to his own ministry, as its true and proper meaning. 

14. Luke xviii, 31-33: “ Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, 


174 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and all things that are written by the prophets concerning 
the Son of man shall he accomplished. For he shall be 
delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall he mocked, and spite : 
fully entreated, and spitted on, and they shall scourge him, 
and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise 
again.” 

Nothing can be clearer than that the true and proper 
fulfillment of various predictions, such as Psa. xxii, 6, 7. 
15; Isaiah 1, 6, is here asserted by our Lord to center in 
his own person, and the sufferings he was about to un¬ 
dergo. 

15. Luke xxii, 37: “For I say unto you, that this which 
is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was 
reckoned‘among the transgressors; for even the things con¬ 
cerning me have their fulfillment.” 

16. Luke xxiv, 25, 26: “Then he said unto them, 0 
fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
have spoken! Ought hot Christ to have suffered these 
things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at 
Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all 
the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” 

Luke xxiv, 44: “And he said unto them, These are the 
words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, 
that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the 
law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms con¬ 
cerning me.” 

17. Luke xxiv, 45, 46: “Then opened he their under¬ 
standing that they might understand the Scriptures, and 
said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved 
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, 
and that repentance and remission of sins should be 
preached in his name among all nations, beginning at 
Jerusalem.” 

18. John v, 39: “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 175 

think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify 
of me.” 

19. John y, 46, 47: “For had ye believed Moses, ye 
would ljave believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye 
believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” 

20. John xiii, 18: “I know whom I have chosen; but 
that the Scriptures may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread 
with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” 

21. John xvii, 12: “And none of them is lost, but the 
son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” 

22. John xix, 28, 30: “After this, Jesus knowing that 

all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might 
be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. . . . When Jesus, there¬ 

fore, had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished, and 
he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” 

After these plain and repeated statements of our Lord 
himself, it is neqdless to dwell on the many passages where 
the same doctrine is echoed by the Evangelists and apostles. 
Twenty-five such passages, besides their parallels, occur in 
the Gospels, an equal number in the book of Acts, and 
still a larger number in the various Epistles. 

The predictions, to which this appeal is publicly made 
by our Lord and his apostles, range through the whole 
extent of the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. 
Besides many indirect allusions, or applications of types 
in the history, they include two passages in Genesis, one 
in Exodus, two in Numbers, two in Deuteronomy, one in 
2 Samuel, nearly twenty in the Psalms, more than twenty 
in Isaiah, two or three in Jeremiah, as many in Daniel, 
and in Hosea, one in Joel, two in Amos, one in Jonah, 
two in Micah, four in Zechariah, and two in Malachi. 
The claim is made throughout the whole of the New Test¬ 
ament, from the first chapter of St. Matthew to the last of 
Bevelation—Matt, i, 22, 23; Bev. xxii, 6, 9, 16—and the 


176 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

prophecies to which it expressly belongs range equally 
throughout the Old Testament, from the third of Genesis 
to the last chapter of Malachi. 

Of late years, however, some have ventured to renounce 
and contradict this uniform testimony of Christ himself 
and his apostles, and still to retain the name of Christians. 
How those can be disciples of Christ who reject some of 
his plainest and most emphatic sayings, it is hard to under¬ 
stand. We have been told, for instance, that in Germany 
there has been “a pathway streaming with light, in which 
the value of the moral element in prophecy has been pro¬ 
gressively raised, and the directly predictive, whether secu¬ 
lar or Messianic, has been lpwered.”* It is by no means 
evident how the moral element can have been enhanced, 
by turning the prophets from inspired messengers of God 
into successful practicers on the credulity and superstition 
of their countrymen. But unless our Lord spent his time, 
after the resurrection, in deluding his own followers, this 
light is merely a relapse into that darkness which brought 
on them his severe rebuke, and from which they were finally 
set free, when “ he opened their understanding, to under¬ 
stand the Scriptures.” A school of negative criticism, which 
translates Psalm xxii, 16, “ For lions have compassed me, 
the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me, as a lion my 
hands and my feet,” and then makes these hands and feet 
to be those of the whole Jewish nation, is more akin to 
lunacy than to real learning. A vast induction, composed 
of such elements, may prove to be only an accumulation 
of learned folly. A pathway of prophetic interpretation, 
streaming with such light, merely illustrates the words of 
our Lord. “ If, then, the light which is in thee be dark¬ 
ness, how great is that darkness!” 


* Essays and Reviews, Essay ii, p. 67. 



THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 177 

Hebrew prophecy, in all its parts, was doubtless a witness 
to the kingdom of God, or to a scheme of moral govern¬ 
ment, exercised through successive ages over a sinful world. 
And the real question at issue is, whether it were a true 
witness to a real redemption, and a living Redeemer, 
promised from the beginning; or a series of dim and im¬ 
perfect guesses, by fallible men, as to the future results of 
the events which were passing around them. In the view 
of Christian faith, it must contain, throughout, both a moral 
and a predictive element. It is neither bare and naked 
ethics, nor mere prediction of the future; but a conjoint 
revelation of the will and purposes of God. If its predic¬ 
tions are mere guesses of man, with no Divine authority, 
then the message becomes a public and notorious immoral¬ 
ity. It is a fraud upon the faith of men, and a blasphemy 
against the God of truth. On the other hand, merely to 
enforce duty was never the sole or chief part of the 
prophet’s message. The contrast between a high standard 
and actual experience would make such a work, if carried 
on alone, a source of despondency and darkness. But 
prophecy, from first to last, is a message of hope. Amidst 
the darkness of sin and sorrow, it reveals the prospect of 
a great redemption. Every gleam of light, which it threw 
upon actual sin and rebellion, was meant to awaken stronger 
desires for the rising of the day-spring from on high. It 
is a message from that God, who sees the end from the 
beginning, with whom a thousand years are as one day. 
While its precepts and warnings belong, of course, to the 
times when each message was given, its promises and en¬ 
couragements are borrowed from that future, which lay 
hidden in the counsels of God, and which God alone could 
reveal. Hence its chief characteristic is a revelation, with 
increasing clearness, of “the good things to come.” All 
centers in it around the person of the great Redeemer. 


178 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


The prophecies are a landscape, bright in every part with 
a light which flows from the still unrisen Sun of Righteous¬ 
ness. “To him gave all the prophets witness,” and “the 
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” 

Now, every message of prophecy will receive a different 
interpretation, as it is read with the face or the back 
turned toward this great hope of redemption, this sunrise 
in the eastern sky. One method results inevitably in the 
destructive criticisms of learned unbelief; but the other 
is that instinct of faith and hope which alone could profit 
•aright by these messages when they were first given, or 
enable ms, in the retrospect, to perceive their real fullness 
and Divine beauty. They must be read not as mere human 
guess-work by many authors widely remote in time, and 
brought together now by mere accidental causes, but as 
gifts from God to sinful men, pervaded throughout by the 
unity of common purpose. This is essential, according to 
the Scriptures themselves, in order to attain a just view of 
their meaning. “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of 
Scripture is of self-interpretation; for prophecy came not 
at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 

It will be enough for our present object to examine 
two or three main examples of that vast induction on the 
destructive side, which begins by reversing this first es¬ 
sential of true interpretation, and then glories in having 
stripped the prophecies, one by one, of their Messianic 
character; as if it were a proud triumph of modern learn¬ 
ing to resume the exact position of the first disciples, when 
their understanding was still darkened, and they were pro¬ 
nounced, by the Truth himself, to be “fools, and slow 
of heart to believe what the prophets had spoken.” I 
will select three instances alone, the earlier and the later 
prophecies of Isaiah, and the visions of the beloved Daniel, 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 179 

doubly sanctioned by our Lord in his own prophecy on the 
Mount of Olives, and when he witnessed his good con¬ 
fession before the Sanhedrim of the Jews. 

L The prophecy—Isaiah vii-ix—according to the con¬ 
stant faith of the whole Church, and the express words of 
the New Testament, is a prediction of our Lord’s super¬ 
natural birth, and announces the lasting continuance of his 
kingdom. The negative theology rejects this interpretation 
altogether. The phrase, Mighty God, it assures us, may 
only mean “strong and mighty one, father of an age.” It 
“ can never listen to one any who pretends that the maiden’s 
child was not to be born, in the days of Ahaz, as a sign 
against the kings of Pekah and Rezin.” In other words, 
the prophecy could only be read aright with the back 
turned upon the bright future, and the hope of the seed 
of the woman, who had been promised from the days of 
Paradise. The Jews were to fix their thoughts entirely on 
their trouble at the moment from the confederate kings; 
and the whole drift of the Divine message was a promise 
that they would soon have access to the pasturages from 
which they were then shut off by the siege, and would be 
able to indulge their infant children once more with curds 
and honey! 

Now let us turn to the prophecy, and see whether it 
lends us no key to its own real meaning. It begins with 
a startling offer, made by God himself to the people and 
their unbelieving king. “The Lord spake again unto 
Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God: ask 
it either in the depth, or in the hight above.” All nature 
seems here thrown open to his choice; as if no token of 
God’s power, however wonderful, would be withheld in this 
hour of temptation, if it were needed to confirm his faith 
in the Divine protection. But the same unbelief, which 
made Ahaz tremble before his enemies, led him to reject 


180 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the gracious offer, with the vain excuse that it would be 
tempting God to obey his own command. The choice of a 
sign then reverts from the faithless king to the Lord him¬ 
self, by whom the offer had been made. We must, there¬ 
fore, expect it to be determined, not by the selfish fears of 
the wicked Ahaz, but by the grandeur of the Divine coun¬ 
sels of mercy, and in the spirit of that later declaration: 
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my 
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
thoughts.” With him a thousand years are as one day. 
The malice of Pekah and Rezin would be, in his sight, like 
dust in the balance, compared with his own thoughts of 
mercy to the chosen line of David, and through them to 
Israel and the whole race of mankind. “And he said, 
Hear ye now, 0 house of David, is it a small thing for 
you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? There¬ 
fore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the 
virgin conceives and bears a son, and shall call his name 
Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may 
know to refuse the evil, and to choose the good.” 

The great object of the promised sign is clearly to give 
a full assurance of God’s mercy toward the house of David, 
however great its own sin and perverseness, and however 
fierce the threats of its enemies. The sign, taken in its 
strictest meaning, fulfills this object; especially since it ap¬ 
pears from chap, ix, 6, 7, that this promised child was to 
be the heir of David’s throne. It implies three things: a 
supernatural birth, answering to the first promise of the 
seed of the woman; a superhuman character, so that in his 
person God wotfld be truly present with his people; and 
freedom from human corruption, since, unlike all other 
children, Immanuel would know from his first' infancy to 
refuse the evil, and to choose the good. 

Such, then, is a double reason in favor of the Christian 


THE PROPHECIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 181 


interpretation. It agrees with the nature of the offer which 
introduces the prophecy, and with its return, after its rejec¬ 
tion by Ahaz, to him who gave it. It supposes the sign to 
have been truly what the offer implied, “in the depth and 
in the hight above;” and it also ascribes to the terms of 
the promise their strictest, fullest, and most expressive sig¬ 
nificance. 

Again, the whole force of the sign, on the opposite view, 
depends on the immediate birth of the child before Rezin 
and Peka'h’s overthrow. It would have no force till the 
actual birth, and its value would cease as soon as Damas¬ 
cus was taken by the Assyrians. It would be simply an 
ephemeral sign of a momentary respite, in the prospect of 
heavier and more lasting judgments. It would require such 
a paraphrase as this: “A child shall be born, in the course 
of nature, within a year, to Ahaz or Isaiah; and before it 
is three or four years of age, it will be possible for it to be 
fed on curds and honey, because these enemies will have 
been overthrow^, and the pastures be accessible once more.” 
Now, it is plain that, on this view, the sign really precedes 
the event as little as in the Christian interpretation, at least 
in its most essential feature. For the natural birth of a 
child from human parents is the most commonplace of 
events, and, standing alone, has scarcely any character of a 
sign whatever; while the circumstance marked as signifi¬ 
cant, the peculiar diet of this child, was not to precede, 
but to follow the wished-for deliverance from Ephraim and 
Syria. 

A third reason for the same view results directly from 
the passage—Isaiah vii, 1-4—where the birth of a child to 
the prophet himself is announced for a sign. This son of 
Isaiah, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, besides the entire difference 
of the two names prophetically given, can not be the same 
with Immanuel, for a clear and simple reason, that the 



182 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


latter is declared to be the owner of the land—chap, viii, 
8—and the destined occupier of David’s throne. Chap, ix, 
7.- But the birth of the prophet’s child evidently fulfilled 
every object required for the temporary purpose of being a 
pledge that the Syrian overthrow was close at hand. The 
birth of a second child, as a mere chronological sign, 
would have been a mere superfluity; and, in fact, Hezekiah, 
the immediate heir, was born several years before. It re¬ 
sults, plainly, that the promise of Immanuel had a differ¬ 
ent object, and did not refer to one moment of time, but to 
the whole series of troubles which were coming on the 
house of David, from mightier foes than Bezin or Rem- 
aliah’s son. 

Again, on the naturalist view, the birth of Immanuel is 
simply a pledge of Rezin’s speedy overthrow, and is sub¬ 
ordinate in its importance to that deliverance of Judah and 
of King Ahaz, which must constitute the main scope of the 
prophecy. But the whole passage, when compared to¬ 
gether, points to an exactly-opposite conclusion. This 
overthrow of Rezin is there made simply the preface to a 
long series of heavier troubles from the kings of Assyria, 
by which Israel and Judah alike would be brought to 
comparative desolation. But the promise of the child Im¬ 
manuel takes the lead of the whole prophecy. It appears 
in the middle of it as the stay in the hight of the Assyrian 
conquests of desolations, and breaks out once more at the 
close as a full message of everlasting consolation: “ He 
shall pass through Judah, he shall overflow and pass over, 
he shall reach even to the neck; and the Stretching forth 
of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Imman¬ 
uel. Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; 
speak the word, and it shall not stand, for Immanuel. . . . 
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and 
the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 183 


shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the 
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase 
of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon 
the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, 
and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from 
henceforth, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts 
will perform this.” 

Even those words of chap, vii, 16, which form the strong¬ 
hold of the naturalist interpretation, and which have led 
many Christian writers to admit a double fulfillment in a 
child of Isaiah or Ahaz, as well as in Messiah, will be 
found, I believe, on closer examination, to lend no real 
support to this view. The mention of “butter (or curds) 
and honey” as the food of the infant Immanuel, is the 
link by which alone his birth is here connected, in time, 
with the overthrow of Rezin. “For before the child shall 
know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land thou 
abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.” But the 
passage does not terminate here; nor would the connection 
be at all clear unless we read the verses that follow. Now, 
these predict, along with, and after , the overthrow of Rezin, 
an Assyrian and Egyptian invasion, extending to Judah as 
well as Samaria. One result of these would be the general 
use of a diet of “butter and honey” from the desolation of 
the country. “In that day a man shall nourish a cow and 
two young sheep; and for the abundance of milk that they 
shall give he shall eat butter (or curds;) for butter and 
honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.” These 
desolations were to extend to Ahaz himself, his people, and 
his father’s house. Verse 17. And thus the real drift of 
the prediction must be, that before the promised Immanuel 
was of age to refuse the evil and to choose the good, not only 
would Rezin have been overthrown, but the land of Judah 
itself have been desolated by the Assyrian armies. Thus 


184 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the sole argument in favor of the lower and temporary 
view of the prediction, when closely examined, disappears, 
and lends a further presumption to the nobler application 
to our Lord himself, the Son of the Virgin, the true Mes¬ 
siah, and the long-promised Heir of David’s throne. 

II. The later prophecies of Isaiah—chapters xl-lxvi— 
are another main object of assault to those modern critics 
who labor to dispense with all supernatural prediction. It 
is asserted boldly that they were not written by Isaiah 
himself, but nearly two centuries later, in the time of Ze- 
rubbabel, and are much rather a history of the present than 
prophecies of a distant future. The treatment of them in 
this spirit, so as to establish these conclusions, has been 
-called the most brilliant portion of Baron Bunsen’s pro¬ 
phetical essays. In this he only succeeds, it is said, to an 
inheritance of opinion derived from Gesenius, Ewald, Mau¬ 
rer, and earlier and later authorities in Hebrew criticism, 
to dispute whose decisions would be reckoned, in Germany, 
a suicidal and ridiculous folly. 

In Germany itself, however, these views have by no 
means met with such a blind submission. On the contrary, 
there are critics of no inferior ability who have seen and 
proclaimed the hollow nature of the unbelieving assumption 
on which they rest. Thus, Keil remarks upon Ewald’s 
treatment of Joshua, and the words apply equally to this 
portion of Isaiah : “ In this dissection the only principle 
which guides him is the old rationalistic doctrine, that a 
supernatural revelation, accompanied by miracle and proph¬ 
ecies, is neither a fact nor a possibility; and that the 
theocratic view of Israelitish history is altogether a crea¬ 
tion of poetic myths. . . . This foregone conclusion 

of common rationalism is both the chief assumption and 
the decisive rule in the determination of the original 
sources. The different passages are said to date from the 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 185 

periods to which, in his opinion, the predictions contained 
in them refer, since the prophecies are nothing but the 
vailed poetic method of picturing present events, or, at 
most, forebodings of future occurrences already involved in 
the present. Actual predictions do not exist. The entire 
theory is, therefore, built upon the sand. It has not the 
slightest objective truth in it, and does not admit of exam¬ 
ination in detail, as it is not founded on any scientific prin¬ 
ciple.” 

Let us now examine the direct proofs of authenticity in 
■* these later chapters of Isaiah, and the nature of those 
critical objections which have been urged to set it aside. 

1. First, the whole book has been received by the Jews, 
so far as evidence remains, from the very date of its publi¬ 
cation as the genuine work of Isaiah. The inscription 
alone is a public testimony to the fact, and no trace of a 
contrary opinion can be found among them. The writer 
of Ecclesiasticus, also, in the second century before Christ, 
alludes distinctly to these later prophecies, and refers them 
without hesitation to Isaiah as their author. 

2. The book of Ezra supplies a still stronger proof. It 
begins with a decree of Cyrus: “He made proclamation 
through all his kingdom, and put it in writing. Thus 
saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven 
hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath 
charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is 
in Judah.” There is here a distinct reference to Isa. xliv, 
28: “ That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall 
perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou 
shalt be built; and to the -Temple, Thy foundation shall 
be laid.” 

This explanation of the decree is not only plain in itself, 
but confirmed by the statement of Josephus, which proves 

that it was the current tradition of the Jews in the first cen- 

16 


186 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


tury. “These things,” he observes, “Cyrus knew through 
reading the book which Isaiah left of his own prophecies, 
two hundred and ten years before. For he reported the 
message of God: * I have chosen Cyrus, whom I have 
made king of many and great nations, to send my people 
into their own land, and to build my Temple.’ These 
things Isaiah predicted a hundred and forty years before 
the Temple was destroyed. When Cyrus had read these 
words he wondered at the Divine message, and a certain 
impulse and ambition seized him to do what was written.” 

3. Our Lord and his apostles bear witness to the same % 
truth. There are about fifty-four quotations from Isaiah 
in the New Testament, and nineteen in which he is men¬ 
tioned by name. Thirty-three of them are from these later 
chapters of which the authenticity has been denied, and 
they are referred eleven times to Isaiah by name. Thus 
Isa. xl, 3, is ascribed to him by John the Baptist and all 
the four Evangelists. When our Lord opened his ministry 
at Nazareth, “there was given to him the book of Esaias 
the prophet.” He turned to the sixty-first chapter, read 
its opening verses, closed the book and sat down, and then 
said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” 
This indirect testimony to the passage, as truly part of 
Isaiah’s writings, and the direct acknowledgment of it as 
genuine prophecy, formed the starting-point of our Lord’s 
Galilean ministry. Again, St. John accounts for the un¬ 
belief of the Jews in our Lord’s miracles by referring to 
another of these predictions: “That the saying of Esaias 
the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who 
hath believed our report?” “Therefore they could not 
believe, because that Esaias said again,” etc. The two 
quotations—one from the earlier and one from the later 
chapters—are followed by the common statement, “These 
things said Esaias when he saw His glory and spake of 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 187 

Him.” The theory, then, which assigns these chapters to 
some later writer during the exile, is in flagrant contra¬ 
diction to the teaching of our Lord and his apostles. 

4. The structure of the work yields decisive internal 
evidence of -its unity. Four chapters of simple narrative 
separate its two main portions. The book of Isaiah’s 
prophecies can not be supposed to end with the first of 
these, or chapter xxxv; for then it would entirely omit the 
most impressive part of his personal history and message 
at the time of Hezekiah’s sickness, and of the Assyrian 
invasion. A final close at chapter xxxix would be still 
more unnatural. How lame and impotent a termination 
would it be to all the warnings and promises even of 
the earlier portion alone—“Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, 
Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken. 
He said, moreover, For there shall be peace and truth in 
my days.” 

The book, on the contrary, as it now stands, has an 
almost dramatic unity. The earlier portion is grouped, in 
all its warnings and promises, around the great fact of the 
progressive desolations wrought in Palestine and the border 
countries by the kings of Assyria. The later portion has 
its basis and prophetical departure in the exile at Babylon 
and the deliverance under Cyrus. The ten tribes were to 
be utterly desolated by the Assyrian; but though the waters 
of the river, strong and many, would reach in Judah even 
to the neck, the adversaries were not to prevail, but to 
meet, on the contrary, a decisive overthrow. Under Baby¬ 
lon the two tribes also would be overthrown, and led away 
into a long captivity; but when the judgment had thus 
reached its hight, the mercies of the Lord would begin to 
return to the chosen people. 

Now, the four chapters xxxvi-xxxix, exactly fulfill the 
purpose of effecting the transition from one of this double 


188 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


series of prophecies to the other. They begin with the 
invasion of Sennacherib, and describe the weakness of 
Judah, the alarm of the people, the insulting boldness of 
the Assyrian invader, and the faith of the pious king. 
The message of Isaiah follows, which forms the climax and 
culminating point of his personal ministry. Then follows 
the brief account of the sudden destruction of the Assyrian 
army, and the death of the proud king by parricide, after 
his return to Nineveh. The first woe from Assyria has 
now passed away, hut another begins to dawn in the far 
horizon. Merodach-baladan, the king of Babylon, sends 
messengers and a present to Hezekiah, to congratulate him 
on his recovery. Under an impulse of vanity he shows 
them all his choicest treasures; and the prophet is sent to 
him at once with the humbling message, that all these 
treasures, and his own sons and successors on the throne, 
shall he carried away in captivity to Babylon. This new 
danger, prophetically announced, now becomes the starting- 
point of a new and still more glorious series of predictions. 
The former were marked by a tone of warning and judg¬ 
ment, but these are rich, from first to last, with promises 
of deliverance and blessing. The intermediate time of 
growing trial and distress, the more humbling details of 
the Captivity, and of the Return itself, are all passed over 
in silence. Two themes of hope and joy characterize the 
whole: the deliverance under Cyrus in the nearer distance, 
or prophetic foreground; and beyond it, the work, the suf¬ 
ferings, and the glory of the promised Immanuel, the true 
Israel, the Man of sorrows, the Anointed Prophet and 
Intercessor, the lasting inheritor of David’s throne. 

The hook of Isaiah, then, in its actual form, has a sym¬ 
metry of structure which the skeptical hypothesis com¬ 
pletely destroys. The four historical chapters, by the 
nature of their contents, fulfill the purpose of linking 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 189 

together two contrasted series of prophecies. All the ear¬ 
lier ones converge toward the event narrated, chaps, xxxvi- 
xxxviii, the grand catastrophe of the Assyrian overthrow. 
All the later ones radiate from the warning to Hezekiah, 
chap, xxxix, and compose a treasury of hopes by which 
the faithful were to be sustained, through two centuries of 
sorrow and fear, till the Return, and through five centuries 
more of conflict and delay, till the coming of the promised 
Immanuel. If we tear away this later portion from the 
rest of the book, instead of one consistent whole we have 
two broken fragments, equally unnatural and incomplete in 
their separate structure. 

5. A comparison with the real prophecies of the exile 
will yield a further proof of the baseless nature of the 
novel theory. Only five or six chapters of the book of 
Jeremiah are simply prophetic, and all the rest are either 
pure history, or abound with historical details. The last 
sixteen chapters of Ezekiel are simple prophecy, but the 
others, being two-thirds of the whole, have historical dates, 
or various particulars of actual history. The same is true 
of the books of Daniel and Zechariah. We have no single 
instance of a complete prophecy, without mention of the 
name of its author, or some statement of the time when he 
wrote, or some definite allusions to the actual events of the 
times. But these chapters, if not a part of Isaiah, would 
be a solitary contrast to this universal law of prophetic 
revelation. No name of a writer would be prefixed, no 
mention of the place where, or the time when he wrote. 
No single detail occurs in them with regard to a single 
person among the Jewish exiles, no name of one king or 
noble of Babylon, or any thing which has the air of histor¬ 
ical narration. The passages which approach the nearest 
to this character, are not only prophetical in tone and style, 
with a constant use or intermixture of the future tense, 


190 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


but are joined with distinct assertions that they are the 
words of that God who “declareth the end from the begin¬ 
ning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet 
done.” With such a concurrence of external and internal 
evidence for their authenticity, as the best and noblest por¬ 
tion of Isaiah’s prophecies, it seems impossible to account 
for the acceptance of an opposite view, but from a spirit of 
settled unbelief in the possibility of supernatural revelation. 

6. The special reasons alleged for this view are either of 
no force, or else prove exactly the reverse. First, in chap, 
xlvi, 1, “Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth;” the present 
tense is used, as it is very frequently in most prophecies. 
But the inference that the events were passing at the time 
is both inconsistent with the supposed date, before the close 
of the exile, and with the words which immediately follow, 
verses 10, 11, which teach us to read in this clear predic¬ 
tion a proof of the Divine foreknowledge. Again, imchap. 
xlviii, 20, “Go ye forth from Babylon,” the appeal is no 
less unfortunate. For the same chapter supplies this dis¬ 
tinct explanation: “Because I knew that thou art obstinate, 
and thy neck an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; I have 
even from the beginning declared it unto thee, before it 
came to pass I showed it thee.” The argument from the 
presence of a few Chaldee forms or phrases is only a cu¬ 
rious illustration of the perversity of these skeptical criti¬ 
cisms. For the book of Daniel, when viewed as genuine, 
was written by Daniel, a Jewish exile, dwelling in Chaldee; 
and accordingly one half of the book is Chaldee, and the 
rest is Hebrew. The negative critics, however, stoutly deny 
its authenticity, and ascribe it to some Jew of Palestine', in 
the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, when neither Chaldee 
nor Hebrew, but a Syriac, distinct from both, was the usual 
language. On the other hand, these chapters of Isaiah, 
which are Hebrew throughout, and where not a single verse 


THE PKOPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 191 

is Chaldee, as in Jeremiah, are referred to a Jew toward 
the close of the time of the exile, when the displacement 
of Hebrew by Chaldee would probably have reached its 
hight. One of the very few words on which the argument 
is based, also, is sagan for prince in the verse, “ I have 
raised one from the north, and he shall come; from ‘the 
rising of the sun he shall call upon my name, and he shall 
come upon princes as upon mortar, as the potter treadeth 
clay.” Now, certainly, the sixty years which had passed 
from the first Assyrian invasions to the fifteenth of Heze- 
kiah—since the Chaldeans were included among the de¬ 
pendencies of Nineveh—were an interval quite long enough 
for the prophet and the Israelites to have learned the Chal¬ 
dean names for their princes; and it would be only natural 
and significant to make use of it in a prediction of their 
overthrow by the Persian conqueror. Hezekiah, besides, 
had received an honorable embassy from the King of Baby¬ 
lon, and it is most probable that one or more sagans might 
have been the messengers; so that nothing can well be 
more ridiculous than to found an argument on this solitary 
word for lowering the time of the prophecy two hundred 
years. 

7. It is needless to dwell, in detail, an the violent 
and even monstrous glosses which have accompanied this 
hypothesis; and which are necessary—even when its date 
has been lowered to the time of Zerubbabel, in defiance of 
all testimony and all internal evidence—to purify it com¬ 
pletely from the character of a Divine and ^supernatural 
prophecy. Such is that brilliant discovery that Isaiah liii 
is no prophecy, but a historical sketch of the life of the 
prophet Jeremiah. After nine distinct and explicit appli¬ 
cations of clauses of this prophecy to Christ in the New 
Testament, including the discourse of Philip to the eunuch 
under the express teaching of the Spirit, when he “began 


192 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


at the same Scripture and preached to him Jesus,” and the 
words, still more weighty, if possible, of our Lord himself: 
“I say unto you that this which is written must yet be 
accomplished in me: and he was numbered with the trans¬ 
gressors, for even the things that concern me must be 
fulfilled”—the acceptance of such a view by any one who 
calls himself a Christian can hardly be explained, unless 
by another passage of the same prophet: “Stay yourselves 
and wonder: they are drunken, but not with wine; they 
stagger, but not with strong drink; for the Lord hath 
poured out upon them the spirit of deep sleep, and hath 
closed your eyes; the prophets and rulers, the seers hath 
he covered, and the vision of all is become as the words 
of a book that is sealed.” Truths, which are plain as 
the daylight to simple and honest hearts, become wrapped 
in mist and darkness when the pride of fancied learning 
usurps the place of lowly reverence for the oracles of the 
living God. 

III. The prophecies of Daniel are another object of de¬ 
termined hostility to the negative critics of modern times. 
In fact, a belief in their genuineness is fatal at once to 
their whole theory. The unusual fullness and clearness of 
the predictions in chapters viii and xi forces us to accept 
the alternative that they are either due to the Divine fore¬ 
knowledge, or else forged prophecies, written after the 
events which they pretend to foretell. Accordingly, the 
latter view is adopted by Celsus and Porphyry, the open 
'adversaries of the Gospel in early times, and by all those 
critics in our own days who strive to reconcile the name of 
Christian with a rejection of all the most essential features 
of the Christian revelation. 

Now, here it is well to remember, at the outset, the real 
nature of the question at issue between unbelieving criti¬ 
cism and Christian faith, and which it is sought to disguise 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 193 

by smooth and flattering words where real compromise is 
impossible. We have been told, for example, that although 
the writer lived after the events, and only borrowed the 
name of the true Daniel, he was a “patriot bard,” who 
used it with no deceptive intention, as a dramatic form, 
to encourage his countrymen in their struggle against An- 
tiochus. But this hypothesis, on the face of it, is incredible 
and absurd. If ever there were a history which clearly 
and undeniably was meant to be received as real, it is 
these chapters of Daniel. If ever there were prophecies 
which, if not real prophecies, are a series of blasphemous 
profanations of the name of God, it is these visions. The 
real meaning, then, of the hypothesis is this, and can be 
nothing else, that the book of Daniel consists of false 
and fraudulent history, invented at will by an unprincipled 
and profane Jewish forger, to be the vehicle of pretended 
prophecies written after the events they seemed to predict; 
and where the name of the God of truth and holiness is 
profaned in every chapter, and almost in every verse, to 
give greater currency to an infamous lie. It means, also, 
that the unknown writer, though our Lord himself has 
called him “Daniel the prophet,” was really one of the 
foremost in the class the apostle describes, who say, “Let 
us do evil that good may come; whose damnation is just.” 
Once accept the premises of these critics, and it is impos¬ 
sible to escape the conclusion that a book more immoral, 
more recklessly profane than this book of Daniel has 
scarcely been written since the beginning of the world. 
The evidence must indeed be strong which would persuade 
any pious mind to acquiesce for a moment in so hateful 
and hideous a conclusion. 

Let us now examine the direct evidence for the authen¬ 
ticity of these prophecies, and the nature of the objections 

which have been alleged to prove them spurious. 

17 


194 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


1. First, the book has been received without opposition 
by the Jewish Church and people, from the time when the 
canon was finished as the genuine work of Daniel himself. 
It rests, therefore, on the same internal evidence on which 
the Christian Church, from the beginning, has received 
every other book of the Old Testament, the constant and 
uniform tradition of the Jewish people, whose jealous care 
of their Scriptures has been confirmed by tests of peculiar 
severity, both before and after the time of the Gospel. 

It has been urged, as some abatement of this testimony, 
that Daniel is placed among the Hagiographa, between 
Esther and Ezra, and is not numbered with the other 
prophets. But it seems a simple explanation that the book 
was not only composed out of Palestine, and partly in a 
Gentile dialect, but that a considerable part is pure history, 
and forms a historical link between the book of Kings 
and those of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Jt is quite easy, 
then, to understand that its place might be fixed with ref¬ 
erence rather to its histories than its prophecies, especially 
since two of the last are expressly sealed, and when the 
canon was formed their meaning would be still an unopened 
mystery. As a history the book forms the natural transi¬ 
tion from the close of Kings or Chronicles to the books of 
Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther; and its association with these 
in the canon is, therefore, very simply explained without 
the-least impeachment of its authority. 

2. Next, we have a distinct testimony of Josephus that 
the book was extant in the time of Alexander, that one 
part of it was read to him when he visited Jerusalem, and 
that it was the occasion of public and especial favors being 
granted to the Jews. “And when the book of Daniel the 
prophet was shown to him, in which he revealed that some 
one of the Greeks would destroy the Persian dominion,' 
judging that he himself was pointed out, he was rejoiced, 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 195 


and dismissed the multitude; and summoning them the 
next day, bade them ask for what gifts they chose. And 
when the high-priest requested that they might use their 
national laws, and be free from tribute every seventh year, 
he granted the whole. And when they further besought 
that he would allow the Jews in Babylonia and Media 
to use their own laws, he readily promised to do what they 
desired.” The appeal is here made to facts which must 
have been notorious, of privileges given by Alexander to 
the Jews. There could be no stronger testimony to the 
full and undoubting conviction of Josephus and the Jews 
of his days, that the prophecy of Daniel was in the hands 
of Jaddua in the time of Alexander, or nearly two hund¬ 
red years before Antiochus. 

3. A testimony still more decisive, by far, in the eyes of 
every Christian is that of our Lord himself, as recorded in 
the first two Gospels: “ But when ye see the abomination 
of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in 
the holy place, (let him that readeth understand,) then let 
them which be in Judea flee into the mountains.” Soon 
after there follow these impressive words: “Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” 

One of the words of Christ, then, attested by this solemn 
sanction from the lips of Him who is the Truth, is the state¬ 
ment that the prophecy in the hands of the disciples, 
which they were charged to read with intelligence, and 
where the abomination of desolation is repeatedly named, 
is truly that of “Daniel the prophet.” The theory, then, 
broached by those modern critics who would make it a forg¬ 
ery in the days of Antiochus, gives the lie direct to the 
Lord of glory, in one of his clearest averments, which is 
followed by a most explicit and solemn attestation. It is 
hard to understand how those who embrace it can still dare 
to call themselves disciples of Christ. 


196 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

4. The testimony of the apostle in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews is more indirect, but hardly less powerful and 
complete. Among the list of the victories of faith in the 
worthies of the Old Testament, we find the two particulars, 
that they “stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the vio¬ 
lence of fire.” The allusion is plainly to the two histories, 
Dan. iii and vi. These are placed in the same rank of his¬ 
torical certainty with all the other facts in the brief sum¬ 
mary, and the conclusion is drawn: “ These all, having 
obtained a good report through faith, received not the prom¬ 
ise: G-od having provided some better thing for us, that 
they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore, 
seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of 
witnesses, let us run with patience the race that is set be¬ 
fore us.” But if some of these witnesses, and the asserted 
triumphs of their faith, are mere inventions of an unscru¬ 
pulous forger, the earnest appeal that follows is robbed en¬ 
tirely of its moral power, and becomes ridiculous and ab¬ 
surd. The truth of the facts is the basis of all the force 
and strength in this glowing exhortation to diligence, 
fidelity, and patience. 

5. The internal evidence from the historical facts alone 
is strong and clear. The chronology falls in with the state¬ 
ment of the other Scriptures, and also with the canon of 
Ptolemy. The name of Belshazzar, after being looked for in 
vain in heathen writers, has now of late been detected in 
the deciphered remains of Babylonia, as a joint ruler with 
his own father at the time of Babylon’s fall. This accounts, 
also, as remarked already, for the minute contrast, that 
while Joseph was made second ruler in Egypt, Daniel was 
only promised by Belshazzar, in the hour of his terror, to 
be the third ruler in his kingdom. The madness of Neb¬ 
uchadnezzar toward the close of his reign is attested by a 
fragment of Megasthenes. The supplication of Daniel, in 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 197 

the first year of Darius the Mede, corresponds punctually 
with the near approach of the expiration of the seventy 
years from Jehoiachin’s captivity; and the earnestness of 
his later prayer, with fasting, in the third of Cyrus, equally 
corresponds to the crisis in the book of Ezra, when adverse 
counsels first interrupted the progress of the work at Jeru¬ 
salem, and brought the Jews into disfavor once more at the 
court of Persia. An unprincipled inventor of fables in the 
days of Antiochus was little likely to form by accident, or 
to produce by artifice, such undesigned coincidences as 
these. The mention that Darius was sixty-two years old 
when he took the kingdom, while it agrees with all proba¬ 
bility, if he were the uncle of Cyrus, is one of the clearest 
signs of a cotemporary and well-informed writer. No other 
explanation is possible, except we impute to him a deliber¬ 
ate fraud in order to produce a false impression, and clothe 
mere fiction with a mask of historical reality. 

6. The language of the book, and the mutual relation 
of its histories and its visions, are another proof of its gen¬ 
uineness. The character of the whole, in these respects, is 
peculiar and complicated. The first six chapters are his¬ 
torical; the other six are a series of prophetic visions. 
The first chapter, three verses of the second, and the last 
five *are in Hebrew, but the rest, from ii, 4, to vii, 28, is in 
Chaldee. Again, the third person is used in the six his¬ 
torical chapters, and the first person in all the rest. Noth¬ 
ing could show more clearly the unity of the whole, and 
the claim, throughout, to be the writing of Daniel himself. 
If the separation of the languages had coincided with that 
of history and prophecy, there might be some excuse for 
a hypothesis which would ascribe the two parts to differ¬ 
ent authors. Their interlacing together, where one chapter 
of history alone is in Hebrew and one of the four success¬ 
ive visions alone in Chaldee, proves that the whole forms 


198 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


one connected work, the parts of which can not be severed. 
But it discovers also a secret relation between the actual 
contents and the languages employed, which marks the 
wisdom of an inspired prophet and not the capricious nar¬ 
ration of an unprincipled forger. The history begins in 
Hebrew, so as to link itself both in form and substance 
with the canonical history at the close of Kings. It 
changesj-o Chaldee as soon as the Chaldeans are introduced 
in the dialogue, and continues in Chaldee throughout the 
time of the seventy years’ Captivity to its close. The first 
vision, also, is in Chaldee; since it does not refer spe¬ 
cifically to Jewish history, but to the series of Gentile 
monarchies, and is an enlargement of the vision, already 
recorded in Clialdee, which was given., to the king Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar. But the other prophecies, since they all refer 
to the later history of the Jews, and the time of their 
restoration, are in Hebrew only. In all these delicate and 
complex relations we have a distinct harmony with the 
character and position of the true Daniel, a Hebrew of the 
royal stock, but an exile from his childhood, who remained 
in Babylon through the whole course of the seventy years. 
Instead of these secret harmonies of Divine wisdom, the 
skeptical theory offers us the blind chance-medley of a 
Jewish forger, who chose, in the times of Antiochus, to 
indite his own inventions in the shape of history, and then 
to garble real history-by turning it into pretended prophecy; 
who adopted a false name in two different ways, and con¬ 
structed his forgery in two different languages, both of 
them distinct from the vernacular of his own days, and one 
of them without precedent in a canonical book of prophecy. 

7. The objection from the alleged presence of Greek 
words, or late forms of expression, has been abundantly 
refuted in Germany itself by scholars of accuracy and 
learning. In fact, our own earlier writers against the deists 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 199 

of last century, Samuel and Bishop Chandler, had already 
done it with substantial force of reasoning. Hengstenberg 
and Havernick, and others, have treated it more fully. It 
is enough to observe here that of the two Macedonian 
words, symphonia and psanterion , referred to—Essays, p. 
76—as decisive proofs of a late composition, the second is 
neither a Macedonian word nor occurs in the book of 
Daniel, while the other occurs in two forms, sumponya and 
syponya , neither of which corresponds exactly with the 
Greek word; that only one known instance occurs, in Po¬ 
lybius, where this Greek word is used for a musical instru¬ 
ment; that in the case of a third musical instrument, the 
sambuca> equally relied on by earlier opponents of the 
authenticity, both Strabo and Athenseus expressly refer the 
instrument itself and its name to an eastern source. Be¬ 
sides, it is highly probable that some intercourse of Greeks 
with upper Asia dates from the time even of Sennacherib, 
as we may infer from Polyhistor and Abydenus. The 
whole objection, once held to be so formidable, after reduc¬ 
ing itself to three names of musical instruments alone, has 
at length been abandoned by some of the latest opponents 
in Germany as untenable and worthless. On the other 
hand, the broad fact, already noticed, of the twofold lan¬ 
guage in which the book is written, agrees perfectly with 
the supposition that it is the- genuine work of the prophet 
Daniel, and with no other view. 

8. It has been urged, as a further objection, that the 
prophecies are clear and full to the time of Antiochus 
Epiphanes, about B. C. 169, and then suddenly cease, or 
.become vague and ambiguous. No assertion, however, 
could be more grossly untrue. There is no pretense what¬ 
ever for making three out of the five prophecies close with 
Antiochus; and a comparison with the New Testament will 
prove that we can only accept that view, in a fourth pre- 


200 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


diction, by directly contradicting and rejecting the authority 
of an inspired apostle. The reference of the fourth part 
of the image and of the fourth beast—chapter yii—to the 
Homan Empire is confirmed by an immense preponderance 
of external authority and internal evidence; and the con¬ 
trary hypotheses of the negative critics are not only mu¬ 
tually destructive, but each of them is loaded with some 
palpable absurdity. Such is the view which makes the 
Medes and Persians to be two of the four empires, in 
direct opposition to the book itself—chapter viii—where 
they form conjointly the Ham, or one empire only; and 
that which makes Alexander and his successors two dis¬ 
tinct empires, in equal contradiction to common-sense and 
the language of the prophecy. But the prophecy of the 
seventy weeks offers a shorter and more distinct proof of 
the entire falsehood of this confident assertion. It is quite 
impossible, without a critical torture like that of the In¬ 
quisition, to make it agree in any way with the asserted 
date under Antiochus; for, not to insist on the total period, 
sixty-two weeks of years are four hundred and thirty-four 
years. The earliest decree to rebuild Jerusalem was that 
of Cyrus, B. C. 536. Hence, this shortened and imperfect 
period, applied to the earliest possible date, would bring 
the close to B. C. 102, or nearly seventy years after the 
Dedication under the Maccabees, when the persecution of 
Epiphanes reached its close. 

On the other hand, the Christian application of the 
prophecy, in its main outlines, is simple, easy, and con¬ 
sistent. The seventy weeks are broken into three compo¬ 
nents of seven, sixty-two, and one single week, or forty- 
nine, four hundred and thirty-four, and seven years. The 
close of the first is not distinctly defined, but it seems 
implied that the street and the wall were to be rebuilded 
during its progress. In B. C. 458 was the decree of Artax- 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 201 


erxes, which formally reconstructed or rebuilt Jerusalem as 
a civic corporation, or a provincial metropolis under the 
Persian Empire. Within forty-nine years, or before B. C. 
409, the book of Nehemiah was complete, the street and 
the wall were rebuilt, and the canon of Scripture apparently 
closed. Sixty-two weeks from this limit, or four hundred 
and thirty-four years—four hundred and eighty-three from 
the first decree—bring us to A. D. 26-27; the exact year 
and date, it is almost certain, of the Baptist's ministry, 
and of those words of our Lord which allude probably to 
this very passage: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand: repent and believe the Gospel.” 
Then follow three and a half years of the Baptist’s and 
our Lord’s ministry till his crucifixion, when Messiah was 
cut off, and none were on his side; the confirmation of the 
new covenant with many disciples; and, lastly, the pre¬ 
diction repeated and applied by our Lord himself when 
Jerusalem was compassed with armies, and the desolating 
abomination stood on holy ground, and the city and the 
sanctuary were both destroyed. To those skeptical critics 
who resist so plain and consistent an application, and strive 
to wrest the prediction to the times of Antiochus, the words 
of another prophet may well be applied: “We grope for 
the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no 
eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night.” The folly 
of this fancied learning, which sets itself boldly against the 
clearest authority of Christ and his apostles, and achieves 
after all such bare and impotent results, can only deserve 
profound commiseration. 

The books of the Old Testament, then, from first to last, 
contain multiplied and various prophecies, which have been 
fulfilled in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and in 
the later spread of his Gospel. The seed of the woman has 
been miraculously born, and has begun to bruise the head 


2Q2 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

of the serpent, by casting down heathen idolatry in the 
chief nations of the world, and planting the standard of 
the cross victorious upon its ruins. The race of Japheth 
have been enlarged, and dwell now in the tents of Shem, 
by the reception of the nations of the West into the visible 
Church of the God of Israel. The seed of Abraham has 
been born, and has begun to he a blessing to all the fam¬ 
ilies of the earth. The true Shiloh has appeared, before 
the scepter had departed from Judah; and his later sen¬ 
tence by a Roman governor proved that it had been then 
departed or was just passing away. A prophet like Moses 
has appeared, rescued in his infancy from the malice of 
murderous enemies, and rejected, when he first came to 
them, by the very people whom he sought to deliver. The 
Virgin has conceived and borne a Son, and his name is 
called Immanuel, by the consenting worship of one-fourth 
of the world’s population. His name is called by these 
countless millions, in every Christmas celebration, “Won¬ 
derful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, 
the Prince of Peace.” He has come in the character 
ascribed to him by the same prophet, “a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief.” The Jews, his own people, 
“hid their faces from him; he was despised and they 
esteemed him not.” That which was written was strictly 
‘accomplished in him: “He was numbered with the trans¬ 
gressors,” for even the sufferings of the Son of God, being 
predicted in Holy Scripture, must be fulfilled. Less than 
seventy weeks of years elapsed after Artaxerxes’s decree of 
restoration to Jerusalem, when “Messiah the Prince ap¬ 
peared.” He was cut off, none were on his side, but even 
his disciples forsook him and fled; and the people of the 
Roman prince, within forty years, destroyed the city and 
the sanctuary, and their desolation has continued even to 
the present day. But the unbelief of the Jews has only 


THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 203 

confirmed the prophecies, and insured the fulfillment of a 
further promise made to Messiah in the prospect of their 
rebellion. “It is a light thing that thou shouldst be my 
servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and tot restore the 
preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the 
Gentiles; that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of 
the earth.” He who can compare the history in the Gos¬ 
pel, and the later progress of Christianity, with the series 
of Old-Testament predictions, and still continue blind to 
their correspondence, and the proof it supplies of the Chris¬ 
tian revelation, falls under the stern rebuke of that sen¬ 
tence of our Lord himself: “If they hear not Moses and 
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one 
rose from the dead.” 


204 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER IX. 

CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 

Christian faith consists in an acknowledgment of the 
Divine mission of onr Lord and his apostles, and an accept¬ 
ance of their testimony to the person and work of Christ, 
as the Son of God, and the Savior of the world. The 
natural means in our days for attaining this faith is an ac¬ 
ceptance of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, as credible and 
truthful records of the first rise of the Christian religion. 
But a reception of the whole Bible as inspired and author¬ 
itative, is a corollary of Christian faith. It holds the first 
place among the subsidiary doctrines of the Gospel. It 
does not enter distinctly into the creeds of the early 
Church; but still it penetrates the whole range of Chris¬ 
tian literature, and is the chief security for a steady and 
firm progress in the knowledge of Divine truth. In the 
minds of common Christians it is now so closely united, 
both by habitual association and spiritual instinct, with 
their faith in the Gospel itself, that they find it hard to 
view the two truths as separable. It is chiefly when we 
have to deal with unbelievers, or perplexed and doubting 
inquirers, that it is needful to distinguish clearly two suc¬ 
cessive stages in the growth of a reasonable faith; which 
must rest, first of all, on the person of our Lord, and his 
supernatural mission and Divine authority; and will after¬ 
ward embrace the inspiration of the written Word and the 
Divine authority of all the Scriptures, both of the Old and 
the New Testament. 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 205 

The previous chapters refer to the evidence of Christian¬ 
ity itself, in contrast to that more open infidelity which 
rejects the Divine authority of the Lord Jesus. Those 
which follow relate to the further truth, assailed by a lax 
and semi-infidel school of professed Christianity, that the 
Old and New Testaments are, throughout their whole ex¬ 
tent, the words of the Holy Ghost, and authoritative mes¬ 
sages from the God of truth to the children of men. It 
seems desirable, then, to offer here a brief outline of the 
general course of argument, by which our faith in the Gos¬ 
pel and in the Scriptures is sustained; since a laborious 
effort has lately been made to involve the whole theory of 
Christian belief in confusion and darkness. 

“Whoever would take the religious literature of the 
present day as a whole, and endeavor to make out clearly 
on what basis revelation is supposed by it to rest, whether 
on authority, on the inward light, on reason, on self-evi¬ 
dencing Scripture, or on the combination of the four, or of 
some of them, and in what proportions, would probably 
find that he had undertaken a perplexing but not altogether 
profitless inquiry.”* Such is the contribution to the guid¬ 
ance of young and unsettled minds, which forms the close 
of nearly eighty pages of disquisition on the “Tendencies 
of Religious Thought in England,” and of a review of the 
whole series of English works on the evidences of Chris¬ 
tianity. But if all past arguments by the ablest men, on 
behalf of Christianity, are inconsistent and almost worthless 
by the admission of clergymen and Christian divines them¬ 
selves, the skeptic may well conceive that his cause is 
gained, and that the Gospel of Christ is worn-out and 
effete in the view of its own official guardians. The idea, 
also, of sending young students to the religious literature 


* Essay vi, p. 329. 



206 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of the present day, “as a whole,” in order to solve for 
themselves a difficult problem of theology, which their 
teachers seem to abandon in despair, is much the same as 
it would have been, at the beginning, to recommend a dip 
into chaos in order to guess out the nature of the coming 
world. 

A healthy eye is required for perfect vision. But it is 
not needful, happily, to know whether our sight depends on 
the cornea or the crystalline lens, on the aqueous or the 
vitreous humor, or “on a combination of the four, or of 
some of them, and in what order and proportion,” before 
we can discern and rejoice in the presence of a beloved 
friend. A humble heart and a healthy conscience will lead 
the most unlettered Christian to a firm belief in the Gospel, 
and in the truth of the sacred Scriptures, though he may 
never have cared to settle what share each kind of evidence 
may have had in this result. Such inquiries may be ob¬ 
jects of lawful curiosity to spiritual anatomists; and when 
humbly and cautiously pursued, like the dissection of the 
natural eye, may enrich our Christian theology with deeper 
views of the Divine wisdom; but they leave the actual 
processes of spiritual vision wholly unaltered. The simplest 
cottager and the most subtile metaphysician stand here on 
the same level; and those who are quite unable to describe 
the steps of the mental process, may be able to discern 
with fullest certainty “the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” 

The steps by which the early disciples were led to Chris¬ 
tian faith stand out before us in clear and full relief in the 
New Testament. The miracles of our Lord and his apos¬ 
tles made a first and simple appeal to their senses and to 
their hearts. The most thoughtless who witnessed them 
were arrested by the sight; and all who were not withheld 
by strong Jewish prejudice, or the debasing power of idol- 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 207 


atry, owned at once the finger of God, and the authority 
of his chosen messengers. But where strong Jewish preju¬ 
dices had to be overcome, the next appeal was to the word 
of prophecy. The apostles reasoned with their Jewish ad¬ 
versaries out of their own Scriptures, “opening and alleging 
that it was needful that the Christ should suffer, and should 
rise again from the dead, and that this Jesus” whom they 
preached “was indeed the Christ.” There was thus a 
striking example of what has been aptly termed in physical 
science, “the Consilience of Inductions.” The results sepa¬ 
rately derived from the occurrence of many miraculous 
signs, and from the plain fulfillment of many predictions, 
in which the prophets had announced a despised, rejected, 
and suffering Messiah, led tQ the same conclusion—that 
Jesus of Nazareth, though rejected and despised by his 
own countrymen, was truly the Christ of God. This truth 
was further established to the early believers by miraculous 
gifts which many of them received, by their own joyful ex¬ 
perience of the pardoning love of God in Christ, by their 
consciousness of the sanctifying power of the Gospel in 
their own hearts, and by the abundant fruits of it which 
they witnessed daily in the lives of their fellow-believers. 

This order, so clear in the case of the first disciples, is 
varied a little, and only a little, in the case of modern dis¬ 
ciples, born amidst the institutions and traditions of a 
Christian land, who have the Bible placed in their hands 
from childhood as the Word of God. First of all, they 
receive the Scriptures with a human faith, on the authority 
of parents and teachers, and of an almost unanimous assent 
of good and wise men, whose conversation and writings are 
like an atmosphere of Christian thought that surrounds 
them on every side. When they read the New Testament 
they find in every page the signs of its general truth and 
credibility. They are thus brought at once face to face 


208 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


within view of the same double evidence of miracles and 
prophecy, which compelled the faith of the early disciples. 
The miracles of our Lord and his apostles stand revealed to 
them with full historical proofs of their reality; and the 
agreement between Jewish prophecies and the life and 
death of Christ is no less clear than when appealed to by 
the apostles themselves in the synagogues of Palestine and 
of the Roman world. Distance of time, in the case of the 
miracles, may have made the impression less vivid, but can 
not affect the substantial force of the argument. But there 
are further confirmations of the Gospel, not shared in 
those early days, from the fulfilled prophecies of the New 
Testament, in the spread and permanence of the Gospel, 
the overthrow and ruin of the Temple, and the long-lasting 
desolation and dispersion of the Jewish people. 

. When once the truth of Christ has been practically 
embraced still fuller evidence dawns upon the heart of 
believers. They feel the power and comfort of its gracious 
promises. Their conscience, taught by the Spirit of God, 
responds with delight to the beauty of its Divine morality. 
They perceive with growing clearness the harmony of its 
doctrines, both with the wants of man and with the attri¬ 
butes of God. And thus their experience, while they sub¬ 
mit with reverence and humility to the Divine messages, 
illustrates the truth of their Lord’s promise: “To him that 
hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundance;” 
while borderers and theological triflers, who keep the truth 
at arm’s length from their own conscience, for subtile and 
curious speculation alone, fall too often under the edge of 
the solemn warning: “From him that hath not, even that 
he hath shall be taken away.” 

There may be a stage, however, in the course of serious 
and thoughtful inquirers, in which their faith in the Gospel 
itself is unshaken, but their traditional trust in the Bible 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 209 

is sorely tried, and in some measure gives way. With 
growing thought and knowledge, difficulties once overlooked 
start out into sudden relief, and may seem for a time to be 
unsurmountableT They have been accustomed from child¬ 
hood to hear the Bible spoken of as one book—the Word 
of God. They examine it more closely, with the help of 
classical knowledge since acquired, and see that it consists 
of many works, in two different languages, written by many 
different writers at remote periods of time; and bears traces 
in every part of its human authorship—in language, gram¬ 
mar, idiom, style, historical features, and even in some 
cases in its doctrinal tone. They have been accustomed, 
again, to hear it defined by entire freedom from all error. 
But they find that errors of translation, errors' of trans¬ 
cription, and readings probably defective, though compara¬ 
tively slight in amount, are admitted almost universally by 
well-informed scholars to exist within its pages; so that 
the ideal perfection once ascribed to it seems to disappear. 
They find numbers, here and there, which seem plainly to 
need emendation; and details which appears more or less con¬ 
tradictory in different accounts of the same event. Quota¬ 
tions from the Old Testament in the New do not seem 
always strictly to correspond, even in words; and the mean¬ 
ing assigned, in some cases, does not appear, on the first 
glance, to be the natural and genuine interpretation. 
Again, large portions in some of the books of the Old Test¬ 
ament seem to be useless details, that bear no stamp of 
Divinity, and are difficult to reconcile with the theory of a 
direct, miraculous, and all-perfect inspiration. These per¬ 
plexities, and a few others of the same kind, when they 
first dawn upon the young Christian student, without de¬ 
stroying or, perhaps, sensibly weakening his faith in the 
Gospel itself, may easily induce him to imitate the Alex¬ 
andrian mariners, when they cast out the wheat into the 

18 


210 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


sea with their own hands, to lessen or avert the danger of 
total shipwreck. The plenary inspiration of the Scriptures 
may then be regarded as a superstitious accessory, a need¬ 
less incumbrance of the Christian faith, which, in an hour 
of peril, out of love to that faith itself, it may be needful 
to sacrifice and cast away. 

A looser faith in the inspiration of the whole Bible, 
when it arises from such causes, ought not to be confounded 
with a settled spirit of unbelief. It may be only like froth 
and scum on the surface in a process of fermentation, by 
which a passive and merely-traditional belief is passing into 
a more powerful, active, and living faith, the new wine of 
the kingdom of God. Men may profess to believe the 
whole Bible without an effort, when they have never appro¬ 
priated or applied one single truth. But when some doc¬ 
trines, or some books, begin to live intensely in their 
hearts, others may seem, by contrast, to be like dead 
branches, which it would be a gain, rather than a loss, to 
prune away. 

Faith in Christianity, and a belief in the inspiration of 
the whole Bible, may either be confounded together and 
identified, or too widely dissevered. One error involves 
some degree of superstition; the other produces a dim and 
misty faith, with some tendency to a dangerous Tejection 
of the truth of God. 

The words of Christ in the Gospels, the facts of his 
death and resurrection, and the great truths and doctrines 
derived from them, might have been transmitted by oral 
tradition alone, or by honest writers under no especial 
guidance and control of the Spirit of God. The truth, in 
this case, would have been earlier and more largely min¬ 
gled with partial error. It must have been liable, in a few 
generations, to a more rapid degeneracy and corruption, and 
the means of later reformation and recovery would be 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 211 


almost wholly removed. Still, facts have shown that even 
the presence of inspired writings has been no full safe¬ 
guard, either to Jews or Christians, against the entrance 
of wide and mischievous corruptions of the faith. They 
simply exclude one inlet of error, bul many others still re¬ 
main. Humble and earnest hearts, in all ages of the 
Church, have often found the way of salvation by oral 
teaching alone; and those discourses of Christ, or words 
of his apostles, which have formed the chief nourishment 
of Christian faith and piety, might plainly have been re¬ 
corded and preserved by honest witnesses, even though the 
rest of the works in which they were preserved bore many 
traces of infirmity and error. 

The relation between the writings of the New Testament 
and the Gospel they reveal resembles closely that of the 
apostles to the Lord who sent them forth. All of them 
bore the stamp of his authority and commission. Two or 
three of them are rather prominent in the course of the 
history ; but of the greater part little more is recorded 
than their names alone. All seem to delight to vail them¬ 
selves in obscurity, that the name of their Lord and Mas¬ 
ter may stand out in fuller relief. 

Now, the same remark applies to the separate books of 
the New Testament. All are full of one great subject— 
Jesus Christ; but they speak almost nothing of themselves 
and of each other. The three earlier Gospels were all com¬ 
posed before many of the Epistles, and yet these contain 
only two or three allusions to one of them only. No men¬ 
tion is made of the name of their authors, and there is no 
quotation from any of them, except one very brief clause. 
St. Paul himself, in his last Epistle, gives no list of those 
he had previously written, which were to be included in the 
canon. The four other apostles give no list of the written 
Gospels. Only one clear allusion occurs in their letters 


212 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


even to St. Paul’s Epistles, where St. Peter gives a highly- 
important testimony to these writings of his brother apos¬ 
tle, and places them in the same rank with the earlier 
Scriptures, hut supplies us with no catalogue of their 
names. 2 Pet. iii, 16. Thus the New Testament contains 
no hint that a correct knowledge of the limits of its own 
canon, without excess or defect, was a leading essential of 
the Christian faith. Such an article could not enter the 
creed while the canon was still unfinished, and has not 
been added in later times. Even the warning at the close 
of the Apocalypse—Rev. xxii, 18, 19—while it enforces 
the guilt and danger of willfully corrupting the Word of 
God, either by subtraction or addition, directly applies to 
that book alone; and it is accompanied by no list of the 
completed canon, so as to enrol this knowledge among* the 
essentials of Christian faith. On the contrary, every Church 
was left to acquire it, slowly and gradually, by receiving 
those books or epistles which were proved to be written 
by apostles, or had received distinct, apostolic attestation; 
and the actual canon had its birth out of the agreement of 
these results in different Churches. An error on this point 
would simply leave the Christian with a less pure or less 
complete medium for acquiring Divine knowledge, but 
would not affect the main outline of the facts of the Gos¬ 
pel, or the grand and essential doctrines of Christianity. 

Again, the inspiration and authority of the Bible are 
not synonymous with entire freedom from the intrusion of 
the slightest error. We can not conceive, indeed, that mes¬ 
sages from the God of truth should contain the least error, 
flaw, or contradiction, at the moment when they issue from 
their heavenly Source, and before their actual transmission 
to mankind. It seems the simplest view, therefore, to as- 
scribe absolute perfection and freedom from error to each 
autograph, as it proceeded at first from its inspired pen- 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 


213 


man; and this simplest view may be the truest also. But 
it is unwise to place the essence of the doctrine in a cir¬ 
cumstance which is no where distinctly revealed, and which 
does not apply to the chief practical difficulty; for the au¬ 
tographs of the Bible have never existed together: the 
earliest had doubtless perished long before the later ones 
were written. A Bible, then, gifted with this ideal and 
mathematical perfection, has never been in the hands of a 
single human being. The Bible, which alone has been ac¬ 
cessible to the great body of the Church from the earliest 
times till now, is, either in whole or in part, a translation 
from copies of the first originals; and possible and even 
actual errors, both of copyists and translators, must be al¬ 
lowed to exist in its pages. The narrow limits of such 
mistakes is, practically, of the highest importance; but 
questions of degree disappear, and one slight or solitary 
corruption of the text becomes as fatal as the most exten¬ 
sive or the most numerous, when once we define Bible in¬ 
spiration by the negative character of entire freedom from 
all error. 

The only true and safe definition of Bible inspiration 
must be of a positive kind. These books were written by 
accredited messengers of God, for a special purpose, in 
order to be a standing record of Divine truth for'the use 
of mankind. They are thus stamped throughout with a 
Divine authority; and this authority belongs to every part, 
even in that form in which the message reaches every one 
of us, till clear reasons can be shown for excepting any 
portion from the high sanction which belongs naturally to 
the whole. There are two ways in which such an excep¬ 
tion may arise. It may be shown by historical evidence 
that such a verse, or clause, or construction, is due to 
wrong translation, or a defective reading, and is disproved 
by exact criticism, or by earlier or more numerous manu- 


214 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


scripts; or else, the mere fact of a discrepancy may prove 
in itself the presence of a slight error, though we may be 
unable to point out, historically, when or how it first en¬ 
tered into the text. Such flaws, however, few in number, 
and chiefly in numerical readings or lists of names, can 
not affect, in the least, the direct evidence which affixes a 
Divine sanction to all the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments. But when errors are asserted to exist which 
can not be referred, with any show of reason, to changes 
due merely to the transmission of the message, as when the 
narrative of Genesis i is pronounced to he scientifically 
false in every part, or the genealogies of the patriarchs are 
affirmed to be a mere disguise of national migrations, then 
a blow is aimed at the very root of the authority of the 
Scriptures. They are plainly degraded from being faithful 
messages of God to the level of erroneous and deceptive 
writings of fallible men. 

Let us now turn to the other aspect of the inquiry, and 
see what are the conclusions we may fairly gather from the 
simple fact that God has been pleased to embody his own 
messages in a written form. ' 

First of all, there is nothing accidental in the gift of 
written revelation. It marks the entrance of a new and re¬ 
markable era in the history of the world. Nearly three 
thousand years had passed before we have any proof or 
sign that any Divine message was embodied in a permanent 
record. But when the chosen people were brought out of 
-Egypt, the gift of a written law was plainly designed, from 
the first, to be one especial feature of the new dispensation. 
The old Mosaic economy centered in the revelation of the 
Law on Mount Sinai; and this law was not only proclaimed 
miraculously by the voice of God out of the clouds and 
thick darkness, but it was miraculously placed on record 
by the hand of God himself: “The tables were the work 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 215 

of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven on 
the tables.” These tables of stone, engraven a second time 
by the finger of the Almighty, were afterward inclosed in 
“the ark of testimony” under the mercy-seat, in the most 
sacred recess of the tabernacle of God. But the whole se¬ 
ries of Divine laws, enshrined in the facts of sacred history, 
was also from the first committed to writing at the com¬ 
mand of God. This is taught in the ordinance of the 
Passover, and the later directions concerning it, which im¬ 
ply that a permanent record was to be made for use after 
entrance into Canaan. It is implied, again, at the waters 
of Marah, and after the gift of the manna; and is dis¬ 
tinctly affirmed at the time of the conflict with Amalek: 
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a me¬ 
morial in the book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, 
for I will utterly put out the name of Amalek from under 
heaven.” When the sacred code was complete, just as the 
two tables, miraculously graven, were already placed within 
the ark, so this book of the Law, the national code of Is¬ 
rael, was given to the Levites, and placed “in the side of 
the ark of the covenant of the Lord.” Deut. xxxi, 26. 
After twenty-five centuries, during which the world has 
been without a written revelation, ever since the miracu¬ 
lous gift of the Law in flames of fire on Mount Sinai, and 
onward through more than three thousand years to the 
present day, such revelations have formed one main feature 
in the history of the moral government of mankind. 

Now, if we ask the reasons of this great change, they 
seem at once to suggest themselves to a reflective mind. 
While laws are very few and simple, and the facts which it 
is desired to register are also few, mere oral tradition may 
well suffice without any written record. > Such a tradition, 
in early times, when confined to a small number of par¬ 
ticulars, might be preserved and handed down with great 


216 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


tenacity, and even appear doubly sacred to those who were 
its depositaries, because it was intrusted to the fidelity of 
their memory alone. But when facts and laws are multi¬ 
plied, a written record is necessary, or the truth will rap¬ 
idly be obscured and lost. There are millions who could 
remember twenty or thirty lines of verse, but only a few, 
here and there, who could recollect and repeat twenty or 
thirty thousand. Now, with the lapse of time, those facts 
of Divine Providence, which it was desirable to keep be¬ 
fore the minds of men, were continually multiplied; and, 
with the entrance of the legal economy, the great moral 
precepts were unfolded into a large variety of personal and 
national duties, and increased by a system of typical ordi¬ 
nances and ceremonial commands. These reasons, while 
they account for the transition from merely oral to written 
revelation, would lead us to infer that this new and higher 
mode of revelation, after being once introduced, would 
never cease to the end of time. Por the facts of Providence 
worthy of memorial, and the precepts and promises, the 
doctrines and examples, based upon them, must naturally 
go on increasing in later generations of mankind. 

^Revelations from God to man, when reduced to writing, 
secure plainly a double object. They are more definite 
and more permanent. They are less liable to be varied, 
and thus gradually corrupted, by erroneous additions; and 
they are also less liable to die out and be forgotten. After a 
season of decay and apostasy their power may be revived 
anew by a fresh appeal to the original documents. Such 
was eminently the case with the Jews in the reigns of Je- 
hoshaphat and of Josiah, and still more remarkably on 
their return from Babylon. It was a feature equally con¬ 
spicuous in the Protestant Reformation. This double pur¬ 
pose is seen in the Divine message, when the Law was re¬ 
peated: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 217 

you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may 
keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I 
command you.” 

Now, it is plain that the first of these two objects, instead 
of being secured, would be frustrated and reversed, if these 
written messages, from the very first, were loaded and dis¬ 
figured by any sensible incrustation of human error. We 
may assume that, if God conveyed his messages through 
human agents, all the characteristics of those agents, ex¬ 
cept moral defect and falsehood, would be permitted to ap¬ 
pear in the record, and thus become a further pledge of its 
reality and historical truth. But if this condescension were 
to extend still further, so as to allow their mistakes and 
ignorances, their sins and follies, to stain and disfigure 
communications which claimed to be Divine; then the 
means devised to secure the permanence of God’s truth 
would, so far, exactly reverse its office, and would give 
permanence to error and falsehood, under the apparent 
sanction of the God of truth. Such a view of the Scrip¬ 
tures is therefore exposed to an objection, on a priori 
grounds, which it would require no slight amount of direct 
evidence to overcome. A means devised by the wisdom of 
God to give permanence, through all later ages, to his own 
truth, would be strangely diverted, so as to produce a re¬ 
sult precisely opposite, and stereotype historical misconcep¬ 
tions and religious falsehood. 

These reasons, which apply with great force tQ the first 
gift of a Divine revelation in a written form, do not war¬ 
rant any expectation of a series of miracles to preserve its 
later transmission from every trace of carelessness and error. 
Even where documents are of no special importance, the 
usual-mistakes, in a single transcription, are comparatively 
few; and the comparison of several copies, at first hand, 

will enable us, almost without a shade of doubt, to restore 

19 


218 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the exact original. In the course of many successive copy¬ 
ings the risk of error will he slightly increased; and it 
may be impossible, after some lapse of time, to be quite 
certain with regard to every letter and word of the original 
document. But still, these variations, at the worst, are 
of a very limited and subordinate nature. They are like 
straws or specks upon the surface of the writing, and 
do not penetrate its inner and vital texture. The same 
would be true if the prophet, as a prophet, were secured 
from all error; but, as a simple amanuensis, were left, 
like later copyists, to the natural results of his own care 
in recording a message felt to be of high and sacred im¬ 
portance. 

The case, however, is widely different, if errors are 
interwoven into the message itself There is, then, no 
means by which it can be eliminated, without tearing 
the whole to pieces, and destroying its authority. There 
is, also, in this case no assignable limit to the amount 
of error which may have entered in. The whole edifice 
of revealed religion would only rest upon a quicksand. 
No one would be able to say how much was true, how 
much was false; where human corruption reached its 
limit, and gave place to the tones of Divine truth and 
wisdom. Instead of stooping to the actual ignorance and 
blindness of man, to raise him once more into the light 
of heaven, such mingled messages would require almost 
a superhuman sagacity to discern good from evil, and 
light from darkness, even in words apparently sealed with 
God’s own signet. We may, therefore, well apply the 
question of Luther to such a view of Scripture and its 
inspiration: “ Are we not ambiguous and uncertain enough 
already, without having our ambiguity and uncertainty 
increased to us from heaven?” The great end for which 
the messages of God are conveyed to mankind in a written 


CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 219 

form, seems of itself to be a pledge of their Divine perfec¬ 
tion, and echoes back to thoughtful Christians the sayings 
of their Lord, that “the Scripture can not be broken,” 
and that “till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one 
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful¬ 
filled.” 


220 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

The great change in the public relation between God 
and man, implied in the gift of written revelation, marked 
the opening of a new and nobler era in the history of the 
world. It was attended with signal displays of the Divine 
power in the plagues of Egypt and the thunders of Sinai, 
and in great and terrible works of the God of Israel. Re¬ 
vealed religion was now to outgrow the narrow limits of 
human memory, and required a firmer and fuller record 
than oral tradition alone. The special acts of Divine power 
and wisdom in former generations were to be noted down 
and faithfully preserved for the instruction of every suc¬ 
ceeding age. The great truths of religion and morality 
were to receive a larger development, and to be embodied 
in laws, and statutes, and ordinances, which required the 
study of a lifetime, rather than the recollection of a mo¬ 
ment, and were to be handed down, in all their width and 
fullness, to many generations. 

All the circumstances which attended this change were 
such as to attest its high importance. The ten command¬ 
ments, the sum and center of the whole legal economy, were 
uttered, first, amidst thunder, lightning, smoke, and fire, 
from the sacred top of Sinai, by the lips of Jehovah him¬ 
self. They were twice miraculously graven on tables of 
stone by the finger of God, deposited within the ark of the 
covenant, in the most holy place of the tabernacle; and 
again transferred, after five hundred years, to the most 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 221 

holy place in the Temple of Solomon. Every reason which 
prompted this new form of revelation seems to require us 
to believe that the written Word of God, when first be¬ 
stowed on his people, was free from all sensible intermix¬ 
ture of human infirmity, moral imperfection, or historical 
falsehood. Such, accordingly, is the view of the law of 
Moses, which meets us continually in the later writings of 
the Old Testament. All their testimonies agree in tone 
with the words of the Psalmist: “The law of the Lord is 
perfect, converting the soul: the testimonies of the Lord 
are sure, making wise the simple: the statutes of the Lord 
are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the 
Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes: more to be desired 
are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also 
than honey, and the honeycomb.” “Thy Word is true 
from the beginning: every one of thy righteous judgments 
endureth forever.” 

It is needless, however, to multiply quotations from the 
Old Testament to prove the high veneration in which the 
written law was held by Jewish believers, and by the 
prophets who were also commissioned to speak the words 
of God to his people. The testimony of our Lord him¬ 
self ought alone to be decisive with every Christian. We 
may apply his own words to the Jews with regard to the 
authority of Moses and the prophets, and say with truth 
of professing Christians, If they believe not Christ and 
his apostles in their testimony to the earlier Scriptures, 
“neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from 
the dead.” Let us examine some of the chief passages 
in which this decisive evidence is given. 

1. The history of our Lord’s ministry begins, in two of 
the Gospels, with his temptation in the wilderness. The 
event, it is plain, unless the narrative were a gross impos¬ 
ture, must either have been personally reported by our Lord 


222 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


himself to his disciples, or made known by a supernatural 
revelation of the Spirit of God. In either case its details 
come plainly to us with a Divine sanction, even if the other 
parts of the Gospels were uninspired history. 

Now, the main feature of this narrative is the signal 
honor paid by the Son of God himself to the written Word. 
By this sword of the Spirit every onset of the mighty and 
subtile tempter is repelled. “It is written,” is the one 
reply, thrice repeated, which has power to quench in a 
moment “ all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” Even 
when Scripture, shortened and garbled, is used in the 
temptation, still Scripture is the only reply. The king¬ 
doms of the world and all their glory are weighed by our 
Lord and Savior against one single sentence of Scripture, 
one word of the law of Moses; and they are only like dust 
in the balance in the eyes of Him who was filled with “ the 
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel 
and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the 
Lord.” It is a startling lesson, which fallen sinners are 
slow to learn, hut which stands out in clear relief in this 
wonderful narrative, sealed by the testimony of the Son of 
God, that obedience to one sentence of the law of Moses 
is a treasure more to he desired than all the riches and 
glories of the outward universe. 

2. After the temptation our Lord began his public min¬ 
istry, and soon transferred it from Judea to Galilee, and 
from Nazareth to Capernaum, by the Lake of Tiberias. 
One main and striking feature of his whole ministry was 
its Galilean theater. This gives a tinge and coloring to 
almost every later allusion in the book of Acts. “Ye men 
of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” “Be¬ 
hold, are not all these which speak Galileans?” “That 
word ye know which began from Galilee, after the baptism 
which John preached.” “He was seen many days of them 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 223 


which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who 
are his witnesses unto the people.” 

What now, by the testimony of the Evangelist, was one 
chief motive which led our Savior to transfer his ministry 
from Judea to Galilee? A distinct reply is given: “That it 
might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, 
saying, The land of Zebulon, . . . Galilee of the Gentiles, 
the people that sat in darkness saw a great light; and to 
them which sat in the region and shadow of death light 
is sprung up.” The force of the prediction lies in the 
simple opposition between the especial scene of sorrow and 
desolation in the early stages of the Captivity, and the 
first appearance of the light and joy of Messiah’s presence. 
Still, the link was so real and powerful that to fulfill this 
prophecy the Lord of glory forsook Judea, and chose the 
shores of the Sea of Galilee for the chief and most favored 
scene of all his earthly ministry. A single sentence of the 
prophet, being a Divine message, had thus power to impress 
its distinctive character on the whole public life of the Son 
of God. 

3. Our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, assumes his 
appointed character as the great lawgiver; and, first, near 
its opening, he defines his relation to the Scriptures of the 
Old Testament in these words: “Think not that I am come 
to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to 
destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say Unto you, till 
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no 
wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, 
therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, 
and shall teach men so, shall be called the least in the 
kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach 
them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of 
heaven.” 

Several things require careful notice in this passage. 


224 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

And, first, our Lord ratifies the truth and sacredness of the 
law of Moses by the same emphatic phrase which he applies 
elsewhere to his own weightiest sayings: “Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, hut my words shall not pass away.” Sec¬ 
ondly, he extends his full sanction to every “jot and tittle” 
of the written law of God. Thirdly, since he addressed a 
Jewish audience, there can be no doubt that his hearers 
understood by this “law” the whole Pentateuch at least, 
or the five books of Moses. Fourthly, the words were 
spoken to remove a probable misconception, arising from 
a certain perceptible contrast of tone between this law and 
our Lord’s own sayings. He assures his disciples that 
the seeming contrast was no real contradiction. His teach¬ 
ing was an expansion and supplement of that contained in 
the law of Moses, but did not abrogate it or set it aside. 
Fifthly, the statement seems plainly. inconsistent with the 
notion that this law, as first given, in one jot or tittle, 
contained any real error; or that it had contracted any 
error in its actual form which a sincere and humble learner 
might not easily separate from the law itself, so as to leave 
the latter in its real purity. Sixthly, the prophets are 
included, along with the law itself, in a commpn recog¬ 
nition. The tone of the whole statement, so solemnly made, 
is wholly adverse to the theory of an intermittent, mongrel, 
and imperfect inspiration, which leaves part of the contents 
of the Old Testament to be Divine, and other parts to be 
the mistaken words of fallible men. * 

Toward the close of the discourse a similar allusion re¬ 
curs: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, even so do unto them; for this is the 
law and the prophets.” 

Here the reason given by our Lord for this simple 
aphorism of moral duty is deeply instructive. He does 
not point out its agreement with instincts of natural equity. 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 225 


He does not rest it simply on his own Divine authority. 
The reason which enforces it is of another kind. It is the 
sum of “the Law and the Prophets.” It concentrates the 
various lessons of social duty, which God had given in such 
various forms and portions throughout the range of the Old 
Testament. No statement could more plainly imply the 
binding authority of the written Word, of the Law and the 
Prophets, over the disciples of Christ as true messages from 
heaven. 

4. The charge is given to the leper, after his cure, “Go 
thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that 
Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.” 

The quotations in the narrative of the temptation are all 
from Deuteronomy. But here our Lord refers to the book 
of Leviticus, and to a chapter full of ceremonial details. 
He enforces their authority by his own command to the 
leper, and, at the same time, gives direct testimony to their 
Mosaic authorship. No statement could prove more clearly 
that, in the view of our Lord, the Pentateuch was of Divine 
origin, and still binding in its precepts on the Jewish people. 

Again, in his reply to the Pharisees, he says: “Go and 
learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacri¬ 
fice.” Here he quotes a brief clause from Hosea, one of 
the minor prophets, appeals to it as a message of God, and 
ascribes the sin and folly of his opposers to their neglect of 
its true meaning. 

5. After the message of the Baptist, our Lord speaks to 
his disciples as follows: 

“But what went ye out to see? A prophet? yea, I say 
unto you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom 
it is written, Behold, VI send my messenger before thy face, 
who shall prepare thy way before thee .... For all the 
prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will 
receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.” 


226 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

This passage is full of attestations by our Lord to the 
authority of the Old Testament, as composed, from first to 
last, of the true sayings of God. First, he quotes from 
Malachi, the very latest of the prophets, and affirms that in 
the coming of the Baptist one of that prophet’s predictions 
was fulfilled. Next, he affirms that, in a certain sense, 
another prediction of the same prophet about Elias also ap¬ 
plied to the Baptist, and had a fulfillment in him. Thirdly, 
he implies that all the prophets were God’s messengers, hut 
that John was honored above them, because of his nearness 
to Messiah, who was the great object of hope in all their 
messages. Fourthly, he arranges the course of Providence, 
not by a reference to worldly empires, hut to the series of 
these Divine revelations, as if they formed the true key to 
all history. First came the Law, then the Prophets, the 
sequel of the Law; and, last and greatest of these, the Bap¬ 
tist; then the first days of the kingdom of heaven. The 
words imply a series of Divine messengers, completed by 
Christ himself, the great Messenger of the Covenant, with 
whom a new era of light was to begin. The close of the 
chapter alludes to the history, in Genesis, of the overthrow of 
Sodom, and bears a solemn testimony to its historical truth. 

6. Matt, xii, 3, 7: “ Have ye never read what David did 
when he was a hungered, and they that were with him? . . . 
But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, 
and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guilt¬ 
less.” 

The appeal is here made to a simple history in the first 
book of Samuel; from which, compared with the words of 
Hosea, an inference is drawn that the act of his disciples 
was quite lawful. But there is also a reference to the law 
of Moses with regard to the tabernacle or temple service of 
the priests. Thus we have, in this one passage, a threefold 
testimony of Christ that the Old-Testament history is trust- 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 227 


worthy in its facts, and a Divine record from which moral 
inferences may be safely and certainly drawn; that the minor 
prophets are inspired Scripture, in which the separate clauses 
are the words of God; and that the Law, as a whole, in¬ 
cluding, evidently, the whole Pentateuch, was worthy of full 
confidence, so that an appeal might be safely made to its 
implied facts, no less than to its direct statements, as a basis 
for moral and religious reasoning. 

7. In Matt, xiii, 13-17, our Lord explains to his disciples 
the reason why he spoke to the multitude in parables, be¬ 
cause of their spiritual blindness and indifference to the 
truth. He proceeds to say that the prophecy of Esaias was 
fulfilled in them—“By hearing ye shall hear, and not under¬ 
stand, and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive.” The same 
prophecy is afterward applied by St. Paul, at Rome, to the 
same unbelief of-the Jews, at the very close of the sacred 
history, and is there styled the voice of the Holy Ghost. 
It is quoted a third time by St. John in the fourth Gospel, 
with the same reference. No testimony could be more com¬ 
plete, on the part of our Lord and his two apostles, that the 
hook of Isaiah contains the words of the Holy Ghost; and 
that the prophecy in Isaiah vi is a true prediction of that 
Jewish blindness which found its climax in the rejection of 
the Gospel during the apostolic age. 

8. In Matt, xv, 1-9, we have another testimony to the 
Divine authority of the law of Moses, and of the prophecies 
of Isaiah. “Why do ye also transgress the commandment 
of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, 
Honor thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father 
or mother let him die the death.” Here the commands in 
the Decalogue and in the twentieth of Leviticus are equally 
quoted as Divine. A broad moral contrast is also drawn 
between the written Word, of which the binding authority is 
affirmed, and those pharisaic traditions which had obscured 


228 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


its meaning, and practically destroyed its authority. The 
words of Isaiah, chap, xxix, are also quoted as being an 
undoubted voice of the Spirit of God. But if the Old-Test¬ 
ament Scriptures, in any part, were purely human writings, 
and not Divine messages, then our Lord, by his constant ap¬ 
peal to them, without making any distinction between them, 
would be guilty of the very sin he condemns so strongly in 
the Pharisees, and would be included under his own cen¬ 
sure—“ In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines 
the commandments of men.” 

9. The history of the Transfiguration, as recorded by St. 
Mark, offers another explicit testimony of the same kind. 
“And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, 
and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son 
of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at 
naught. But I say unto you that Elias is indeed come, and 
they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is 
written of him.” 

The exact reference of these last words is not perfectly 
clear. But this makes the appeal of our Lord to the writ¬ 
ten Word, not only with reference to his own sufferings, but 
those of the Baptist, doubly striking. His deeper wisdom, 
when contrasted with the knowledge of his early disciples, 
or modern half-disciples, instead of leading him to discern 
errors and imperfections in the Old Testament, only revealed 
to him in its pages definite predictions of specific events in 
distant ages, where only a dim haze might be visible to com¬ 
mon eyes. His own sufferings were all “as it was written,” 
and those of his forerunner, who came “in the spirit and 
power of Elias,” were also “as it was written of him.” His 
words teach us distinctly to rest upon the truth of Scrip¬ 
ture, and the certainty of its prophetic intimations, even 
where we see through a glass dimly, and its meaning by no 
means stands out to us in clear and full relief. 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 229 


10. The reply to the question of the Pharisees on divorce 
is of peculiar interest. Our Lord bears witness in it to the 
Divine authority of that early part of Genesis which has 
been assailed of late by so many unbelieving doubts and 
criticisms. “Have ye not read, that he which made them 
at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For 
this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave-" 
to bis wife, and they two shall be one flesh? Wherefore 
they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God 
hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” 

Now, here, first of all, the very form of the appeal shows 
that what the Pharisees read in their own Scriptures, in 
Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, they were bound to 
receive as the words of God. “Have ye not read?” This 
implies, evidently, whatever you read in those Scriptures 
which you habitually receive, you are bound to regard as 
Divine truth, and of decisive authority in all moral questions. 
Next, our Lord does not fall back on his own authority. 
He rests his answer on a decision already given. A single 
verse in the second of Genesis, which critical anatomists 
would transfer from Moses, the inspired prophet, to some 
unknown patcher-up of ancient documents hundreds of years 
later, is, in the view of Christ, a Divine statute, of binding 
authority to all mankind. “What therefore God hath joined 
together, let no man put asunder.” He proceeds to adopt 
the statement of the Pharisees, that Moses gave the pre¬ 
cept about the bill of divorcement, and explains that its 
nature was simply permissive, and designed to lessen and 
restrain evils which had their source in the hardness of 
their hearts. The design of the law was not to sanction 
capricious divorce, but to exclude a further and still more 
aggravated sin. 

11. The actions and the teachings of our Lord during the 
earlier days of Passion-week abound in evidence of the same 


230 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


truth. He sends his disciples for the colt with the message, 
“ The Lord hath need of him,” because it was needful that 
a prediction of Zechariah should be fulfilled. He condemns 
the sin of the Jews by a double reference to Isaiah and 
Jeremiah: “It is written^ My house shall be called a house 
of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” He si¬ 
lences their censure of the children by a still more pointed 
appeal to the Psalms. “Yea: have ye never read, Out of 
the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected 
praise?” In his answer to the question about his own au¬ 
thority, he accepts the principle that authority from God 
was required in such a message, and implies that John, like 
all the prophets, had this authority. After the parable of 
the vineyard, he makes his appeal to the written word once 
more. “Hid ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone 
which the builders rejected, the same is become the head 
of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous 
in our eyes?” He then reasons out the consequences of 
this Scriptural prophecy in the Psalm, and confirms them 
by a reference to two others in Isaiah and Daniel. “And 
whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on 
whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” The 
double allusion to two prophecies respecting Messiah is plain. 
“He shall be for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of 
offense, to both the houses of Israel: and many among 
them shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and snared, and 
taken.” Isa. viii, 15. “Thou sawest till that a stone was 
cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet 
of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces. Then was the 
iron and clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken in 
pieces together, and became like the chaff of the Summer 
thrashing-floors, and the wind carried them away.” Dan. ii, 
34, 35. We have thus, from the lips of our Lord, in this 
one passage, both a confirmation of the authority of three 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 231 

different books of prophecy, and a striking testimony to the 
secret unity of Divine wisdom, which runs through the whole 
range of these various messages of God. One verse in the 
Psalms is a Divine' key, which expounds the mutual rela¬ 
tions of two distinct warnings—one in Isaiah, to the Jews, 
and another in Daniel, to those Gentiles who were long af¬ 
terward to be called in their room. 

12. The answers to the Sadducees and to the lawyers are 
peculiarly instructive. And, first, our Lord ascribes all the 
religious errors of the Sadducees to one source—ignorance 
of their own Scriptures. “ Ye do err, not knowing the Scrip¬ 
tures, nor the power of God.” He appeals to the record in 
Exodus, as being truly a Divine message. “ Have ye not 
read that which was spoken unto you by God?” He infers 
confidently the truth of the resurrection of the dead from a 
single title of God on the face of the record. “I am the 
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 
It may be added that the same reply, which put the Saddu¬ 
cees to silence, ought equally, among professing Christians, 
to silence and condemn a vast amount of Sadducean criti¬ 
cism about Elohistic and Jehovistic documents; as if either 
Moses were not the author of the Pentateuch, or else the 
names of God were introduced by him haphazard, in a 
strange mosaic, according to the accidental character of ma¬ 
terials ready-made to his hand. 

The reply to the lawyer—Matt, xxii, 40—is not less in¬ 
structive. “ On these two commandments hang all the Law 
and the Prophets.” Now, these two precepts, in the eye of 
sound reason, are pure, essential, and immutable moral truth. 
And yet all the Law and the Prophets, our Lord assures us, 
depend upon them. How can falsehood depend upon pure 
and eternal truth? or how can imperfect morality be any real 
corollary from the great commandments of perfect love? 


232 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Again, the question which silenced the Pharisees reveals, 
in a striking manner, the authority and Divine inspiration 
of the Psalms of David. One verse of Psalm cx convicts 
them of ignorance respecting the true character of the prom¬ 
ised Messiah. It is a Divine enigma, our Lord indirectly 
shows us, of which the only solution is in the great mystery 
of the Gospel—the Word made flesh, of the seed of David— 
“of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over¬ 
all, God blessed forever.” Thus, one title of God in the 
Law, by our Lord’s testimony, is an adequate basis for faith 
in thp resurrection of all the faithful dead; and another 
clause in the Psalms is also a sufficient evidence for that 
glorious truth, the Incarnation of the Son of God. 

13. The parting discourse against the Pharisees abounds 
with proofs of the full authority ascribed by our Lord to 
the written Word of God. The scribes and Pharisees, while 
sitting in Moses’ seat, were to be observed and obeyed, even 
while their actions were condemned. Unless the law of 
Moses were truly of Divine authority, such an instruction 
could never have been given. Their guilt lay in urging its 
minuter requirements, and omitting “ the weightier matters 
of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” Yet our Lord 
does not set aside even its least commandments, but confirms 
them. “These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone.” They witnessed against themselves that they 
were the children of those who had killed the prophets. 
The aggravation of their guilt clearly lay in the fact that 
the prophets were truly the messengers of God. “Thou that 
killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto 
thee,” is the condemning charge against Jerusalem. In the 
next chapter the words of Daniel the prophet are quoted as 
a Divine prediction, with the caution, “Whoso readeth, let 
him understand.” The history of the flood of Noah, and 
of the general destruction of mankind, is also referred to as 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 233 


a solemn and undoubted reality, a warning for the days of 
his own return. 

14. The allusions to Scripture during the time of the 
Passion are, 'if possible, still more impressive. Every step 
in the pathway of the Man of sorrows seems here to be 
guided by a chart, which he saw clearly laid down for his 
own guidance in the Word of God. “Ye know that after 
two days is the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed 
to be crucified.” For he was the true Passover, and the 
time of his sufferings must correspond with the typical serv¬ 
ice, which had prefigured them for fifteen hundred years. 
His betrayal was to be the fulfillment of an inspired proph¬ 
ecy. “The Son of man goeth, as it is written of him; but 
woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed: 
it had been good for that man if he had not been born.” 
The type of the Nazarite was now to be fulfilled in him. 
“ I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until 
the day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s king¬ 
dom.” The fear and dispersion of his disciples would be 
the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy. “All ye shall be 
offended because of me this night; for it is written, I will- 
smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scat¬ 
tered abroad.” The treachery of Judas is referred to the 
truth of Scripture as its secret explanation. “None of them 
is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might 
be fulfilled.” Our Lord’s patient submission to his enemies 
was in reverence to the revealed predictions of the written 
Word. “Thinkest thou I can not now pray to my Father, 
and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of 
angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that 
thus it must be?” The Evangelist adds a. brief commentary 
on the whole course of his betrayal: “All this was done 
that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Our 
Lord’s reply to the high-priest is a quotation from one of 

20 


234 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Daniel’s prophecies. “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of 
man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven.” The indignities he received were the 
fulfillment of Isaiah’s prediction: “I hid not my face from 
shame and spitting.” The purchase of the potter’s field 
with the price of treachery was the fulfillment of another 
prophecy. “ They parted his garments, casting lots: that it 
might he fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They 
parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they 
cast lots.” The exclamation, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, 
was a plain appropriation by our Lord, in the hour of his 
agony, of the twenty-second Psalm, as one connected pre¬ 
diction of his sufferings, and of the glory that would follow. 

15. The Gospel of St. Luke furnishes many other exam¬ 
ples of this constant appeal to the Scriptures by our Lord, 
as an authority without appeal. It will be enough to select 
some of the more striking, first before, and then during, the 
time of his Passion. 

In Luke x, 25, we read that a lawyer stood up and 
tempted him, saying, “ Master, what shall I do to inherit 
eternal life?” To this weighty inquiry our Lord replies at 
once by the question, “What is written in the law, how 
readest thou?” The second reply is a confirmation of the 
law’s authority, and a virtual quotation—“ Thou hast an¬ 
swered right: this do, and thou shalt live.” In the next 
chapter the truth of the history of Jonah is affirmed, and 
its typical character is declared. “For as Jonas was a sign 
to the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this 
generation.” The two narratives of the queen of Sheba and 
of the Ninevites are both confirmed, and a moral is derived 
from each of them. A further testimony follows to the. Di¬ 
vine mission of all the prophets of the Old Testament, and a 
promise that others would soon be sent forth, gifted with the 
like authority. The words of Mieah are presently quoted 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 235 

(Luke xii, 51-53; Micah vii, 6,) as a true prophecy of the 
divisions to be occasioned by the Gospel. The prophets 
are again referred to, Luke xiii, 27-34, as the chosen mes¬ 
sengers of God, and our Lord ranks himself among their 
number. “It can not be that a prophet perish out of Jeru¬ 
salem.” In chapter xvi we have the two emphatic declara¬ 
tions: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for 
one tittle of the law to fail;” and again, “If they hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, 
though one rose from the dead.” The short and earnest 
caution, “Remember Lot’s wife,” puts a "seal of truth and 
inspiration on the histories of Genesis; for it is founded on 
a single verse, never alluded to elsewhere in the later 
Scriptures for fifteen hundred years. The address to the 
disciples on the approach to Jerusalem is also peculiarly 
impressive: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem and all things 
that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man 
shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered to the 
Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and 
spitted on, and they shall scourge him and put him to 
death, and the third day he shall rise again.” m 

16. The words of St. Luke, xxii, 37, deserve especial 
notice. “For I say unto you that this which is written 
must yet be accomplished in me, and he was numbered 
among the transgressors: for even the things concerning me 
have their fulfillment, (xai yap rd Ttep\ Ipoo riXot; e/st.)” 

Here our Lord not only applies to himself the words of 
Isaiah liii, 12, but gives this prediction the foremost place 
among the reasons why he was content to suffer. The 
Word of God must not fail. It would fail unless the Mes¬ 
siah were reckoned among the transgressors. It might 
seem strange and unseemly that the Son of God should 
submit to so deep an indignity, but the truth of God’s 
Word must be maintained at any sacrifice, “for even the 


I 


236 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


things which relate to me,” the promised Messiah, the Son 
of God, “have their fulfillment.” The incarnate Son of 
God himself, by his own testimony, must be subject to the 
authority of the written Word, and its announcements of his 
own sufferings were laws which even he must obey. 

The conversation with the two disciples, after the resurrec¬ 
tion, repeats the same lesson. “0 fools, and slow of heart 
to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Were not 
these the things it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to 
enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses, and from 
all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures 
the things concerning himself.” 

No statement can be more clear and express than that 
which our Lord has here made in the first bright dawn of 
his resurrection glory. He tells his disciples that Moses 
and all the prophets contained predictions of his own suf¬ 
ferings; that it was the dullness of their hearts alone which 
hindered them from perceiving their true application; and 
that this reference was so real as to create a moral necessity, 
beforehand, for the Messiah to suffer the very things which 
he himself had suffered. In other words, by refusing to 
suffer, and thus to fulfill these inspired predictions, he 
would have forfeited his claim to be the true Messiah of 
God. The truth of Scripture, in its prophecies, is thus 
made the moral basis of the whole work of redemption; 
and a refusal to see the reference to our Lord and his deep 
humiliation in these predictions of the law and the proph¬ 
ets, is declared to be a sure proof of folly and blindness 
of heart. 

The same doctrine forms the substance of his parting 
address to his disciples, in the same Gospel, and is rendered 
still more striking by its -connection with the gift, then be¬ 
stowed upon them, of a clearer and spiritual vision. “And 
he said unto them, These are the words which I spake 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 237 


unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must 
be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, 
and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. 
Then opened he their understandings, that they might 
understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it 
is written, and thus it behooved the Christ to suffer, and 
to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance 
and remission of sins should be preached in his name 
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” Here our 
Lord gives his sanction to each of the three main divisions 
of the Jewish canon, the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Hagiographa; affirms that each contained prophecies con¬ 
cerning him, which the Divine veracity made it needful for 
him to .fulfill; that these predictions included not only his 
sufferings which were now past, but that preaching of 
the Gospel which was shortly to begin; and, in short, that 
the whole Christian dispensation rests upon a moral and 
imperative necessity, that the Word of God in the proph¬ 
ecies of the Old Testament must inevitably be fulfilled. 

It is needless to quote in detail the passages to the same 
effect in the fourth Gospel—John i, 17, 21-23, 29; (comp. 
Gen. xxii, 8;) verse 45; ii, 17, 22; iii, 14, 15; iv, 
5; v, 37-39, 45-47; vi, 14, 31-35, 45; vii, 19, 22, 23, 
37-39, 40-42; viii, 17, 18, 44, 52; x, 34-36; xii, 14-16, 
37-41; xv, 25; xvii, 12; xviii, 4; xix, 24, 28-30, 35-37; 
xx, 9—or the numerous references to the authority of the 
Old Testament in the apostolic writings. In the book of 
Acts we have ten quotations from the Psalms, five from 
Isaiah, and others from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, 
Jo«l, Amos, Habakkuk, 1 Kings. In St. Paul, thirty- 
seven from the Psalms, fifteen from Genesis, ten from Ex¬ 
odus, one from Numbers, thirteen from Deuteronomy, one 
from Joshua, one from 2 Samuel, two from 1 Kings, one 
from Job, three from Proverbs, twenty-seven from Isaiah, 


238 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

three from Jeremiah, from Hosea, and Habakkuk, and one 
from Joel, Haggai, and Malachi. In every instance the 
appeal to the Scriptures is made by the apostle as to 
the sure fountain of heavenly truth. Their titles are, 
Scripture, the oracles of God, the words of the Holy 
Ghost. Both in the Gospels and the Epistles, “It is writ¬ 
ten,” is the decision for every doubt; and “Have you not 
read in the Scriptures?” is the rebuke for every form of 
ignorance and error. 

The conclusion which every sincere disciple of Christ 
must draw from these sayings of his Lord and Master, 
confirmed by those of his apostles, is clear and self- 
evident. It is summed up for us in three general declara¬ 
tions of our Lord himself, and two of his chief apostles. 
“The Scriptures can not be broken.” “All Scripture is 
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” 
“Prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but 
holy men of God spake as they were borne along by the 
Holy Ghost.” The flaws which have been contracted in 
the transmission of these messages, we may infer safely 
from these multiplied quotations, are so few and slight, 
that for every practical purpose they disappear from view. 
They may be detected here and there by a strong micro¬ 
scope of minute criticism; but our Lord and his apostles, 
in hundreds of quotations, bearing on the most vital points 
of doctrine, and on the most weighty facts of Old Testa¬ 
ment history, never find it needful once to allude to their 
existence, or to utter one caution against undue confidence 
in the Sacred text. No contrast can be more total than 
between the unbelieving, flippant criticisms on the Old 
Testament, practiced in our days by some learned men, 
who still “profess and call themselves Christians,” and the 
tone of their divine Lord and Master, before whose 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 239 

judgment-seat they will stand, when deep reverence for 
their authority led him to renounce all angelic aid in the 
hour of his sorest conflict and deepest sorrow. “Thinkest 
thou that I can not now pray to my Father, and he will 
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels. But 
how then shall the Scriptures he fulfilled, that thus it 
must be?” 


240 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER XI. 

. THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

The Scriptures of the New Testament, from their later 
origin, are not capable of receiving that direct proof of 
their Divine inspiration and authority from the lips of 
Christ himself, which the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms 
have received in such ample measure. Since they began to 
be composed, several years after the ascension, and the 
latest of them were not written till near the death of the 
oldest apostle, at the close of the first century, they could 
scarcely receive a collective attestation even from the apos¬ 
tles themselves. There is also, in the historical Scriptures 
of both Testaments, a remarkable reticence on the part of 
the writers, with regard to their own especial claims. The 
Lord of the prophets, when on earth, amid the wonder 
caused by his miracles, “ withdrew into the wilderness.” 
The sacred historians, in like manner, seem to withdraw 
their own personality from our view, and are content to be 
simple witnesses of the facts they record; and seldom 
reveal their own names, or speak of any special guidance 
and direction of the Spirit they might have received. In 
the case of the Old Testament histories, this silence is 
amply compensated by the full testimony borne to their 
authority by our Lord himself. But in the parallel case 
of the Gospels and the book of Acts, no such com¬ 
pensation could occur. We are thrown, for the proof of 
their Divine inspiration, upon the combination of three dif¬ 
ferent kinds of indirect evidence—the analogy of earlier 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 241 

Scripture, the promises of Christ, and scattered intimations 
in the later hooks of the New Testament. 

I. First, the inspiration and Divine authority of the Old 
Testament, established so firmly by the words and actions 
of our Lord himself, are a strong and almost irresistible 
presumption that the writings of the New Testament have 
the same especial character, and share the same authority. 
All the reasons which explain the first gift of written reve¬ 
lation at the time of the Exodus, in the growing number 
and importance of the facts of God’s providence, which 
called for lasting memorial, and in the increasing fullness 
of the precepts, promises, and doctrines revealed, apply with 
equal, or even superior force, to the times of the Gospel. 

‘They form a most weighty presumption, from the precedent 
already given, that the facts of the Gospel history, and the 
new and higher doctrinal teaching of our Lord and his 
apostles, would not be left to chance and human error for 
their transmission to later times, but would also be em¬ 
bodied in writings of Divine authority, stamped, like those 
of the older covenant, with the signet of Heaven. The 
teaching to be preserved was equally complex and various. 
The importance of keeping it free from adulteration was at 
least as great as in the earlier messages of the Law and the 
Prophets. A written revelation was no doubtful innova¬ 
tion, but was now become a kind of standing law of the 
providence of God. The higher dignity of Christ com¬ 
pared with Moses, and of the Gospel compared with the 
Law, made its careful transmission, pure from human error, 
still more plainly expedient and desirable. So that every 
reason, drawn from the existence of the Old Testament, 
would seem to make it certain that inspired writings, of 
similar authority, would be given to embody in a per¬ 
manent form, for the use of later ages, the oral teaching 

of Christ and his apostles, and the wonderful truths of the 

21 


242 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and -ascension of the 
Son of God. 

II. This general reason, from the precedent of the Old 
Testament Scriptures, becomes doubly powerful from the 
special character of the new dispensation of the Gospel. 
The authority of the Law and the Prophets is continually 
referred to one cause—that the writers were guided and 
actuated by the Spirit of God. Thus we read of Moses: 
“I will take of the Spirit that is on thee, and will put it 
upon them. . . . And the Lord took of the Spirit that was 
upon him, and gave it to the seventy elders; and it came 
to pass, when the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, 
and did not cease. . . . And Moses said to Joshua, Enviest 
thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people 5 
were prophets, and the Lord would put his Spirit upon 
them!” (Ex. xi, 17, 25, 29.) So David, as the sweet psalm¬ 
ist of Israel, describes his own messages: “The Spirit of 
the Lord spake by me, and his word was on my tongue.” 
So, more generally, all the prophetic writings are called 
“the words which the Lord of Hosts sent in his Spirit by 
the former prophets.” (Zeeh. vii, 12.) One of the most 
usual forms of quotation from the Old Testament in the 
New, is under the title of “the words,” or “utterance,” of 
“the Holy Ghost.” 

The gift, then, of written revelation in the Law, the 
Prophets, and the Psalms, is distinctly and expressly 
referred to the Spirit of God. But the Gospel is eminently 
the dispensation of the Spirit. His presence, after our 
Lord’s ascension, was to be so much more fully manifested, 
that by comparison it is pid to be vouchsafed for the first 
time. “For the Holy Ghost was not yet, because that 
Jesus was not yet glorified,” John vii, 39. The apostles 
were ministers “ of the new covenant, not of the letter, but 
of the Spirit, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit givet.h 


TIIE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 243 


life.” “How shall not the dispensation of the Spirit be 
rather glorious?” 

Now, since the one main work of the Spirit, even before 
the coming of Christ, was the gift to the Jewish Church 
of the written revelations in the Law of Moses, the Psalms, 
and the Prophets, and a much fuller manifestation of his 
presence was distinctly promised under the Gospel, it seems 
inconceivable that the writers of the New Testament should 
not have enjoyed at least an equal measure of his Divine 
teaching and guidance, have been equally preserved from 
error, and their messages have an equal claim to be called 
“the words of the Holy Ghost.” We must else allow that 
the new dispensation, while in other respects an advance on 
the old, in this most important and vital element, underwent 
a strange retrocession, from the Divine to the simply hu¬ 
man, from the teaching of the Spirit to the words of men; 
from pure truth, sealed with God’s authority, to a mixed 
and imperfect record, subject to innumerable doubts, uncer¬ 
tainties, and abatements. This double presumption, though 
it rests in part on a priori grounds, and our natural sense 
of consistency and harmony in the ways of God, is still so 
simple and powerful that very few thoughtful minds can 
resist its force, or view it as less than decisive. It does not 
help us to decide what books of the New Testament should 
be reckoned canonical. But it makes it almost impossible 
to resist the conclusion, that some inspired records would 
be given under the Gospel, unless we reject the truth of 
our Lord’s own repeated testimonies to the authority and 
inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures. In point of fact, 
scarcely an example can be found among Christians of 
a full admission of the Divine inspiration of the Old 
Testament, and of a denial that the same character is 
shared by the Gospels, and other writings of the New 
Testament. 


244 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


III. A third presumption may he drawn from the same 
comparison with the earlier Scriptures, to confirm, not only 
the authority of the New Testament writings in the abstract, 
but the general outline of oilr actual canon. For the Old 
Testament, both by the Jews in general and by our Lord 
himself, is ranked under three divisions—the Law, the 
Prophets, and the Psalms. Or, viewing the whole in the 
order of time, it consists of a series of histories, forming 
three-fifths of the whole; of devotional and didactic books, 
belonging chiefly to the later part of the middle period of 
the history, and of prophecies, growing out of its latest 
portions. The histories reach from Creation to the return 
from Babylon. The Psalms and Proverbs, the chief books 
of the Hagiographa, belong to the reigns of David and 
Solomon. The written prophecies range from Isaiah to 
Malachi, or in time from Jonah to Nehemiah, through the 
latest portion of the history. 

Now, the New Testament canon, as it now stands, exhib¬ 
its the same threefold division, and in the same order of time. 
We have, first, an historical portion in the Gospels and 
Acts, reaching from the incarnation, the beginning of the new 
creation of God, to the planting of the Gospel in Borne, the 
capital of the Gentile world. We have, secondly, a doctrinal 
and practical portion, in the twenty-one Apostolic Epistles, 
all of them parallel in time with the later half of the book 
of Acts. We have, last of all, one book of prophecy, the 
Apocalypse, dating from a little beyond the close of the 
Sacred history, but within the limits and on the extreme 
verge of the apostolic age. The proportion of the history 
to the other portions is also precisely the same in the two 
Testaments. This close analogy of structure is a further 
presumption, not only that the Gospel has its own inspired 
writings, but that these are represented faithfully, with no 
serious excess or defect, in the actual canon. 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 245 

IV. The promises of our Lord to his apostles form a 
second branch of evidence, which serves, in a more direct 
way, to prove the inspiration and authority of nearly the 
whole of the New Testament. Out of the twenty-seven 
writings of which it is composed, all, with three important 
exceptions, have sufficient and full historical evidence of an 
apostolic authorship. They are the writings of those 
divinely-commissioned messengers of the Gospel, one of 
whom has described their credentials in these words: 
“Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you, 
in all patience, in signs and wonders, and mighty deeds.” 
They were fully-attested embassadors of the words of Christ. 
And this evidence must confirm their written as well as 
their spoken messages, and even, if possible, in a higher 
measure. For speech is sudden and momentary, and far 
more liable to the intrusion of error, through haste or 
negligence. But a written message is deliberate; it is open 
to revision, if the messenger were conscious of any negli¬ 
gence on his part, any intermission of the guidance of the 
Spirit of God, or any failure to abide in the light of his 
high commission. St. Barnabas, at least, and perhaps St. 
Paul, too, may have erred in feeling or judgment, when the 
contention was so sharp between them, and hasty words 
may have been spoken on either side; and St. Peter erred 
in act, if not in speech also, at Antioch, when his brother 
apostle “withstood him to the face, because he was to be 
blamed.” Gal. ii, 11. Two, if not three, of these chief 
apostles, were thus liable to error in act, and probably in 
speech, even in practical questions, closely linked with the 
due fulfillment of their message. Even in their case the 
consent of two or three witnesses, or the absence of protest 
or correction from a brother apostle, seems required for the 
full assurance that, in special cases, their own infirmities 
had not mingled with their oral teaching, and impaired the 


246 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


practical fulfillment of tlieir great commission. But in 
these very cases no trace of human weakness appears in 
their writings. St. Paul’s allusion to Barnabas and Mark 
are as full and cordial as if no dissension had ever arisen; 
and St. Peter stamps with a title of Divine authority those 
very letters of St. Paul, which contain the mention of his 
own error, and of the rebuke he had justly received. So 
that, while a general promise of Divine guidance would 
apply to all the oral teaching of the apostles of Christ, it 
must be conceived, from the nature of the case, to be 
doubly emphatic and full, when applied to writings delib¬ 
erately composed by them in the fulfillment of their solemn 
trust. 

Now, the promises of our Lord to the apostles are very 
full and strong, both in their first commission, and in its 
later renewal at the time of his own death and resurrection. 
First, he says to them in allusion to their testimony before 
rulers: “It shall be given you in that same hour what ye 
shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of 
your Father which speaketh in you.” It is true that the 
promise has direct reference to one kind of special emerg¬ 
ency. But if this guidance of the Spirit was promised so 
strongly for a personal and temporary purpose, how much 
more must we conceive it to apply to an occasion still more 
important, when they were making provision for the last¬ 
ing transmission of their message, and for the guidance and 
comfort of the whole Church, in every succeeding age! At 
the close of the same discourse we have the emphatic 
words: “He that receiveth you, receiveth me; and he that 
receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me. He that receiv¬ 
eth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a 
prophet’s reward.” By the use of this title our Lord 
places their authority on -a level with that of the earlier 
prophets. And since these writings are called “the oracles 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 24Z 


of God” and “words of the Holy Ghost,” we may infer 
that the writings of the apostles, in the fulfillment of their 
commission, would claim to be received with the same sub¬ 
mission and reverence by all the true disciples of Christ. 
It would not be they who should speak their own words, 
but “the Spirit of their Father would speak in them.” 
The words at the last supper repeat the same promise, and 
include in it the gift of prophetic illumination: “ When he, 
the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all 
truth; for he will not speak from himself, but whatsoever 
he shall hear that will he speak, and he will show you 
things to come.” This solemn declaration that the Spirit 
would teach the apostles truth only, because he would not 
speak from himself, but by commission from the Father and 
the Son, would lose all its practical meaning, if the Spirit 
left them in their writings, to “speak from themselves,” and 
thus to mix an indefinite amount of human error with the 
messages of God. 

V. The higher rank of the apostles, compared with the 
prophets, both of the Old and New Testaments, is a further 
evidence of the same truth. The writings of the Old Test¬ 
ament prophets, our Lord himself bears witness, were the 
words of the Holy Spirit speaking by their mouths. He 
affirms, also, that a greater prophet than .the Baptist had 
not appeared, and still, he that was “less,” or “inferior,” in 
the kingdom of heaven, would be greater than he. The 
natural meaning seems to be, that even those prophets who 
held quite a secondary place under the Gospel were really 
higher than the Baptist in spiritual honor and dignity. So 
we read that “God hath set in the Church, first, apostles, 
secondarily, prophets;” and that Christ gave “ some apos¬ 
tles, and some prophets,” when he ascended on high, and 
received gifts for men. We find in the book of Acts, 
Agabus, Judas, Silas, Simeon, Lucius, and probably Stephen, 


248 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Philip, and others, companions of the apostles, who belonged 
to this second class or order in the Church of Christ. The 
higher authority and dignity of the apostles, by whose 
hands alone the gifts of the Spirit were conveyed, is implied 
in the whole history. 

The conclusion from this comparison is simple and clear. 
The writings of the prophets of the Old Testament were 
under the guidance of the Spirit, and of Divine authority. 
Much more must we believe that, under the dispensation of 
the Spirit, the same guidance would be vouchsafed to the 
apostles in their writings, since they rank still higher than 
the others in spiritual dignity and honor. If we receive, 
then, as historically true, the statements of our Lord with 
regard to the apostolic office, confirmed by the mutual tes¬ 
timony of the apostles themselves, then the inspiration of 
the New Testament, three books alone excepted, seems a 
clear and unavoidable inference. Accordingly, it seems 
that the early Churches were guided mainly by this prin¬ 
ciple in the formation of the canon; since the relation 
of Mark to Peter, and of St. Luke to St. Paul, gave their 
writings an indirect sanction, equivalent to immediate au¬ 
thorship by one of the apostles. 

VI. In the historical books the character of simple* testi¬ 
mony is most prominent, and a direct assertion by the 
writers of their own inspiration might seem out of place. 
The direct evidence chiefly applies, then, to the two other 
main portions of the New Testament, the Epistles and the 
Apocalypse. The apostles, in the Epistles, bear witness to 
their own inspiration, along with that of the Evangelists, 
and of the Old Testament; while the Apocalypse, besides 
claiming Divine authority for itself, puts a parting seal upon 
all the prophetic writings of the Word of God. 

In the earliest epistle of St. Paul, the first to the Thes- 
salonians, he makes this remarkable statement: “For this 


THE INSPIRATION OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. 249 


cause thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye re¬ 
ceived the Word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received 
it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word 
of God, which effectually worketh in you that believe.” 
He enforces his commands to them by the declaration, “ He 
that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also 
given unto us his Holy Spirit.” His written and spoken 
messages bear the same title, the Word of God. “For this 
we say unto you, by the Word of the Lord, that we which 
are alive, and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not 
prevent them which are asleep.” He adds, at the close, the 
sanction of an oath to enforce the public reading of his 
message. “ I charge you (with an oath) by the Lord, that 
this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.” Xhe same 
tone of Divine authority runs through the second epistle to 
the same Church; and he adds a token at the close, by 
which his genuine epistles might be discerned from every 
counterfeit that might falsely assume his name. “The sal¬ 
utation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in 
every epistle; so I write.” He joins together his oral 
teaching when among them, and his former letter, in the 
same rank and description, as “not the word of man, but 
the Word of God.” 1 Thess. ii, 13; 2 Thess. ii, 15. 

In the Churches of Galatia his authority had been ques¬ 
tioned by the Judaizing teachers. He is thus led to affirm 
it strongly in the opening verse, and indeed through two 
whole chapters. The same tone of authority continues 
throughout the letter to the close. 

In 1 Corinthians we have a distinct appeal to the teach¬ 
ers of that Church, who ranked highest in their spiritual 
gifts. “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or 
spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto 
you are the commandment of the Lord.” In the Second 
Epistle to the same Church he directly compares himself 


250 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


with Moses, as one who had received like authority, with a 
still higher message, styles himself an embassador of Christ, 
reminds them that Christ spoke by him, and that both in 
his letters and when present he was intrusted with direct 
authority from the Lord for the edification of his people. 
In Romans he speaks of “the grace given to him that he 
should be the minister of Christ to the Gentiles, minister¬ 
ing the Gospel of God,” and of the “mighty signs and 
wonders,” with which, in the fulfillment of the same com¬ 
mission, he had preached the Gospel of Christ. Both at 
the opening and close of the letter he associates himself 
with the prophets and their writings, as now fulfilling the 
like office, and completing and unfolding their earlier mes¬ 
sages, while no less than fifty quotations from Old Testa¬ 
ment Scripture are embodied in this one epistle alone. In 
Ephesians he refers them to his own letter as a proof of his 
“knowledge of the mystery of Christ, which in other ages 
was not made known, as it was now revealed unto his holy 
apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” He speaks through¬ 
out as God’s messenger, filled with the Spirit, and armed 
with complete authority to utter precepts, doctrines, and 
promises, in the name of the Lord. 

The same claim of full authority runs through the Pas¬ 
toral Epistles. The glorious Gospel of the blessed Jesus 
was committed to his trust. Hymeneus and Alexander 
were delivered unto Satan, that they might learn not to 
blaspheme. He was “ordained a preacher and an apostle, 
(I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not,) a teacher of the 
Gentiles, in faith and verity.” In the fulfillment of this 
office he gave commands to the men, to the women, to the 
bishops and deacons, and to Timothy himself. He predicts 
coming evils under an express voice from the Spirit, (iv, 1.) 
He gives in succession thirty distinct commands, referring 
to a large variety of ministerial duties and arrangements 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 251 


within the Churches. He enforces these commands by an 
appeal to God and Christ, and the elect angels, and calls 
his own teaching “wholesome words, the words of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and doctrine that is according to godliness.” 
He repeats a most solemn admonition to Timothy, “before 
God and the Lord Jesus Christ,” to keep the commandment 
in his epistle, “without spot, unrebukable, until the ap¬ 
pearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the Second Epis¬ 
tle, the last which he wrote, he declared solemnly, in the 
prospect of death, that “ he was appointed a preacher and 
an. apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles;” and even as¬ 
sociates his own teaching with the Old-Testament Scrip¬ 
tures, as of equal authority. “Continue thou in the things 
thou hast learned, and been assured of, knowing of whom 
thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast 
known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee 
wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ 
Jesus.” 

VII. These testimonies in St. Paul’s epistles are not 
confined to this part of the New Testament alone. They 
include three further statements, which apply directly to 
those books which have not apostles for their authors. 

1. Pirst, in 1 Cor. viii, 18, 19, we have a direct allusion 
to St. Luke as the writer of the Gospel we possess under 
his name, and already honored by the use of it among the 
Churches. This early view of the text, held by Origen, 
and embodied in the prayers of the Church, for many ages— 
coll. St. Luke’s Day—has been disputed..by several mod¬ 
ern critics, from Grotius onward, on very weak and insuf¬ 
ficient grounds. A comparison with the book of Acts 
proves clearly that St. Luke is the person designed. 
But the words, “whose praise in the Gospel is in all the 
Churches,” are used by way of definition, or as a distinct¬ 
ive title, equivalent to a personal name. There were, how- 


252 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


ever, scores of prophets and teachers, whose names must 
have been widely known as oral teachers of the Gospel. 
But St. Luke and St. Mark alone, among those inferior to 
the apostles, were honored to compose a written Gospel; 
and of these St. Luke alone was well known to have accom¬ 
panied St. Paul in his first entrance to Macedonia, from 
which country the letter was written. On this view the 
whole passage is clear and consistent, and the Gospel of St. 
Luke receives here a direct sanction from the great apostle 
to the Gentiles, as an honorable portion of the writings of 
the new covenant. 

2. The second passage—1 Tim. v, 18—in a later epistle 
completes and confirms the evidence derived from the first. 
“For the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox 
that treadeth out the corn. And, The laborer is worthy 
of his reward.” The former clause is a quotation from 
Deuteronomy, or the Law of Moses; the second is written 
verbatim in St. Luke’s Gospel—x, 7. Both of these alike 
are called by the name.of “Scripture,” and appealed to as 
decisive authority. This is more remarkable in the second 
case, because they are the words of Christ himself. Yet 
they are referred to by the apostle simply as Scripture, or 
a saying of the written Gospel, and not in their distinctive 
character, as words spoken by the Lord himself. No fuller 
testimony could be given, in few words, to the inspired au¬ 
thority of the third Gospel; the very same which some 
might imagine, from the words of its own preface, to be 
more open than any other part of the New Testament, to 
doubt and reasonable contradiction. The words are further 
noticeable, because they furnish a proof how early this Gos¬ 
pel had acquired currency and full authority within the 
Church of Christ. 

3. The third passage—2 Tim. iii, 16—affirms directly the 
inspired authority of the Scripture of the Old Testament, 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 253 


which had been familiar to the beloved Timothy from his 
childhood. But there is no warrant for confining their 
testimony to these alone. On the contrary, the expression, 
“all Scripture,” following the more general phrase, “the 
holy writings,” requires us to take these words in their 
widest sense. Now-this was the last of St. Paul’s epistles, and 
all the others were written earlier; and Timothy was pres¬ 
ent when most of them were composed, and shared in the 
superscription of more than one of them. Again, in the 
previous epistle, to the same beloved companion, the Gos¬ 
pel of St. Luke has been already quoted under this very 
name of Scripture; and their internal relations are a strong 
proof that the twor others, of St. Matthew and St. Mark, 
had been written still earlier. St. Paul had visited Jerusa¬ 
lem thirty years after the Ascension, and the Gospel of St. 
Matthew must, therefore, without a question, have been act¬ 
ually known to him. He had been, still later, at Cesarea, 
the Roman seaport of Judea, for whose converts internal 
evidence would lead us to believe that the second Gospel 
was written; and he was writing from Rome, to which place 
tradition has often referred to, and hence it is almost be¬ 
yond a doubt that it must also have been known to him. 
If St. Matthew’s Gospel claimed the title of Scripture, it is 
plain that St. Mark’s, from its close resemblance of contents 
and style, must have done the same. So that these words of 
St. Paul, addressed to Timothy, would naturally, in the view 
of the latter, include these three Gospels, and the earlier 
letters of St. Paul himself. They are thus a direct asso¬ 
ciation of the greater part of the New Testament, with the 
Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, under the common title 
of “Scripture given by inspiration of God.” 

The testimony includes, not only the three earlier Gos¬ 
pels, and the other epistles of St. Paul, but the bpok of 
Acts also. For St. Luke was now with the apostles, as 


254 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


lie had been during the voyage, and at the beginning 
of the first imprisonment. The book closes with the men¬ 
tion of that imprisonment, and of its two years’ contin¬ 
uance, but says nothing of St. Paul’s release. St. Luke 
was still present with the apostle, when he wrote to Co- 
losse—Col. iv, 14—but not when he wrote, still later, to 
Philippi, to which place he had probably returned—Phil, 
ii, 19, 20; iv, 3. It is thus highly probable, and almost 
certain, that the book of Acts was written before the date 
of the Second Epistle to Timothy. But since it professes 
to be a continuation of the Gospel, which St. Paul has 
twice commended, and once referred to under the name of 
Scripture, it must evidently have been known to him, writ¬ 
ing with St. Luke at his side, or in daily intercourse, and 
be therefore included in his declaration, that “all Scripture 
is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteous¬ 
ness.” The testimony, therefore, really applies to the whole 
of the New Testament, except the General Epistles, and the 
Gospel and Apocalypse of St. John. 

VIII. The two epistles of St. Peter supply further test¬ 
imonies of the same kind. First of all, the inspiration of 
the Old-Testament prophets is clearly and fully affirmed. 
The Spirit of Christ, St. Peter tells us, “was in them, and 
testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the 
glories that should follow.” Twelve or thirteen quotations 
from the Old Testament, or direct allusions to it as the 
“oracles of God,” occur in the course of this short letter. 
But he proceeds at once to make a similar statement con¬ 
cerning his fellow-apostles, that they had preached the Gos¬ 
pel “with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,” and 
that their Gospel message was “the Word of the Lord 
which endureth forever.” The mention, also, of St. Mark, 
at the close, as the apostle’s son in the faith, if the second 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 255 

Grospel were already written, for which we have strong in¬ 
ternal evidence, would be an implied attestation of its 
character, and would agree with the tradition that it was 
written by St. Mark, chiefly from materials with which St. 
Peter had supplied him. 

The Second Epistle contains three most important pas¬ 
sages, on the authority both of the Old and the New Test¬ 
ament. First, the apostle lays down a fundamental law for 
the study of the Old Testament, based on the doctrine that 
all was Divine. “No prophecy of Scripture is of self¬ 
interpretation : for the prophecy came not ever by the will 
of man; but holy men of God spake, as they were moved 
(or borne along) by the Holy Ghost.” Since all proceeded 
from the same Spirit, to regard them as independent human 
compositions, which some of late would propound for a first 
principle of true interpretation, is, according to St. Peter, 
a mischievous error. They must, on the contrary, be 
compared with each other, as parts of a greater whole, if 
we would understand their true and full meaning. 

In the second passage, these inspired words of the Old- 
Testament prophets, and the commandments of himself and 
his fellow-apostles, are joined together, as equally binding 
on the conscience of Christians. The common object of 
both epistles was this—“that ye may be mindful of the 
words spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the com¬ 
mandment of us, the apostles of our Lord and Savior.” 
The earlier message of the prophets, and the later one of 
the apostles, is thus equally sealed with full authority 
from God. 

The third passage is more specific, and refers directly to 
St. Paul’s writings. “Account that the long-suffering of our 
Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, 
according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto 
you. As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these 


256 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

things; which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, 
as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own de¬ 
struction.” 

There are here two distinct assertions, both of them 
highly important. First, there is a reference to one epistle 
of St. Paul, written to these Christians, and in which the 
doctrine that the long-suffering of the Lord was salvation, 
was set before them. Now, as Galatia is mentioned in the 
opening of the First Epistle, and St. Peter was the apostle 
of the circumcision, either the Epistle to the Galatians, or 
that to the Hebrews, must naturally be intended by this 
reference. The former contains, however, no such state¬ 
ment as that to which St. Peter alludes; but the latter does 
in several places—Heb. ii, 1-3; iv, 1-3; iii, 14; vi, 9-12; 
x, 23-25, 35-39. The conclusion seems evident, that St. 
Peter ratifies, as the work of St. Paul, the only one of his 
epistles which does not bear his name, and of which the 
authorship has been consequently disputed, even down to 
our own days. Secondly, the apostle includes all the epis¬ 
tles of St. Paul under the sacred name of Scripture, “ which 
they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also 
the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” This testi¬ 
mony is the more striking and weighty, when we remember 
that one of these letters contains the only mention of St. 
Peter’s fault at Antioch, and of the reproof which he 
received from his brother apostle. There seems no good 
reason to doubt that the first three Gospels, no less than 
the Old Testament, are meant by the other Scriptures, with 
which the epistles of St. Paul are here united; as sharing 
the same title, and forming along with them one har¬ 
monious body of Divine truth, perfect in its own nature, 
though liable to be perverted by the ignorance and rashness 
of sinful men. 

The short Epistle of St. Jude, besides six or seven 


THE INSPIRATION OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. 257 

0 

allusions to leading facts of the Old Testament, and one 
supernatural revelation, and the revival of an ancient and 
long-forgotten prophecy of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, 
seems distinctly to ratify the Second Epistle of St. Peter, 
as this had confirmed and ratified all the epistles of St. 
Paul. “But, beloved, remember the words which were 
spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: 
how that they told you there would be scoffers in the last 
time, who would walk after their own ungodly lusts.” 
There seems here a distinct allusion to the words of St. 
Peter—2 Pet. iii, 3—with this difference, that the evil is 
predicted as near in one case, and described as present in 
the other. And this view is confirmed by the other resem¬ 
blances—Jude 6; 2 Pet. ii, 4; Jude 7; 2 Pet. ii, 6-9; 
Jude 8; 2 Pet. ii, 10; Jude 9; 2 Pet. ii, 11. There is 
thus a series of testimonies, by which St. Paul bears witness 
to the canonical authority of St. Luke’s writings, and the 
two earlier Gospels, St. Peter to all St. Paul’s epistles, and 
St. Jude to the epistles of St. Peter in their turn. 

IX. The writings of St. John form confessedly the latest 
part of the New Testament, and they belong to all its three 
divisions. They complete the historical and epistolary, and 
constitute alone the prophetic portion, thus binding the 
whole into one complete system of Divinely-revealed truth. 

Now, first, the Gospel, besides witnessing directly to its 
own apostolic authorship, as the work of that chosen and 
beloved disciple, who leaned on the bosom of the Lord, 
and thus claiming, in the highest degree, the faith and rev¬ 
erence of Christians, bears strong indirect testimony to the 
three earlier Evangelists. For the more closely it is exam¬ 
ined, the clearer are the signs that it is, in its outline and 
conception, a supplemental narrative; designed to record, 
not merely a distinct aspect of ouf Lord’s character, but 
portions of his ministry, and especially his visits to Judea, 


258 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


which had been purposely omitted in their works. These 
Gospels, it is evident from history alone, must have been 
well known to St. John; and a tacit reference to them, 
though an opposite statement has sometimes been paradox¬ 
ically made, may be easily traced through the whole narrative. 
Thus, i, 6, refers plainly to Matt, iii, Luke iii, and its ab¬ 
ruptness is best explained by the fact that a fuller account 
of the Baptist’s ministry was already on record. Again, i, 
15, refers to Matt, iii, 11, and then expounds it by a brief 
and noble commentary. John i, 32, 33, has a like refer¬ 
ence to Matt, iii, 16, 17. The mention of Andrew, Simon, 
two other brothers, namely, James and John, Philip and 
Nathanael, implies that the list of the twelve apostles had 
been already put on record; since the Twelve are afterward 
mentioned in this Gospel, but their names are not given, 
and no account appears of their ordination to their office. 
In iii, 19, there seems a reference to the account in St. 
Mark of the false witnesses. In iii, 24, is a direct reference 
to Matt, iv, 12, and in iv, 44, to Matt, xiii, 57, and Luke 
iv, 24. In xviii, 11, we have a similar reference to Matt, 
xxvi, 3§-44, and Luke xxii, 42, and there are several others. 
The visits to Jerusalem, and the notice of the Passover, 
about the time of the miracle of the loaves, dovetail remark¬ 
ably with the other Gospels, and serve at the same time to 
fix the chronology of our Lord’s ministry. Thus the fourth 
Gospel not only, by the mention of its author, attests its 
own inspiration, but confirms by an apostolic sanction those 
which were already in being. 

The epistles of St. John supply no direct materials for 
the confirmation of the other New-Testament Scriptures; 
but two ideas pervade them in every part, that they are 
the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and the truth of God. 

The Apocalypse, as it forms the latest portion of the New 
Testament, and its only book of prophecy, is peculiarly full 


THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 259 


both in the statement of its own inspiration, and in its 
testimony to all previous Scripture. It opens with its high 
title—“the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto 
him, to show his servants the things which must shortly 
come to pass.” It pronounces a blessing on those who read 
and hear “the words of this prophecy.” The beloved St. 
John names himself as the messenger of Christ. He says 
that he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” and that he 
wrote by the express command of the risen Savior. “I 
heard behind me a voice, as of a trumpet, saying, What 
thou seest, write in a book.” There was thus the same 
voice of authority in its publication, as when the ten com¬ 
mandments, the earliest written message of God, were pro¬ 
claimed, with “ the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud,” from 
the top of Sinai. Seven commands to write attend the seven 
epistles to the Churches, besides the double command al¬ 
ready given. What is not to be written is enjoined—x, 4— 
as well as what is to be written—xiv,' 13. Twice at the 
close the seal is put upon the message, “Write, fot these 
are the,true sayings of God.” “Write, for these words are 
true and faithful.” Lastly, the truth of this message is 
joined with a Divine title, which is like a seal on the au¬ 
thority of all the earlier Scriptures. “These sayings are 
faithful and true, and the Lord God of the holy prophets 
hath sent his angel to show unto his servants the things 
which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly: 
blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of 
this book.” At the very close a double curse is pronounced 
on those who shall add to, or take away from “ the words 
of the book of this prophecy.” The Pentateuch and the 
Apocalypse, in this respect, stand alone. As to the earliest 
and the latest portion of written revelation, they alike con¬ 
tain a solemn caution against adding to them or taking 
away; and stronger internal declarations, than in any other 


260 


TIIE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Scriptures, of their own Divine authority. Nine or ten 
times the writing of the Law by Moses is affirmed in Deu¬ 
teronomy; and twelve times, or upward, the Apocalypse is 
declared to be written by the command of Christ, and to 
consist, throughout, of the true sayings of God. 

Thus the inspiration and authority of the New Testament, 
though not capable of the direct evidence given to the 
earlier Scriptures, by the lips of our Lord himself, upon 
earth, has other evidence, from plain analogy with the Old 
Testament, from the character of the Gospel dispensation; 
from the revealed rank of the apostles, as even higher than 
the prophets, from the direct averments of St. Paul con¬ 
cerning his own epistles, and his indirect testimony to 
St. Luke’s writings, and the earlier Gospels, from the cu¬ 
mulative testimonies of St. Peter and St. Jude, from the 
statements of the fourth Gospel, and the full and emphatic 
declarations of the Apocalypse, like a keystone to the 
whole—which leaves those Christians without excuse, who 
treat it’ as mingled and imperfect utterances of fallible men, 
and refuse to own that it is, in reality, “the true sayings 
of God,” the last and highest portion of that Word which 
will assuredly judge them at the last day. 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 


261 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

The Bible has been received by the Church of Christ 
from the first ages, as the Word of Grod, the great fountain 
of religious truth. It has thus been the object of wider, 
deeper, more earnest, and more assiduous meditation and 
study, than any other book whatever, and even more than 
all other books combined. Thousands on thousands of 
works have been written, to unfold its truths, and apply 
them to the hearts of men. The amount of Biblical litera¬ 
ture, during the three centuries since the Reformation, is 
prodigious. The labor of a lifetime would not suffice for a 
bare perusal, much less for a careful study, of all its mani¬ 
fold varieties, in criticism, history, doctrine, ethics, and 
practical applications to the religious life. It has been 
translated, also, into near two hundred languages, and cir¬ 
culated in more than fifty millions of copies; and hence has 
arisen a still further amount of critical labor and learned 
industry, altogether unique in the history of the world.' 

Now, this immense accumulation of Biblical literature, 
although its source is the reverence the Bible has received 
for so many ages from the whole Christian world, may sup¬ 
ply a skeptical spirit with large materials for casting doubt 
and suspicion on the Divine message. For this end it is 
only needful to view it from without, instead of within; and 
to trace the multiplied divergence and contradiction at the 
circumference of this mighty world of thought, instead of 
discerning its central unity, and its growing fullness from 


262 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


age to age. Man touches nothing which he does not defile. 
The gift of revelation to a fallen world implies that men 
'are prone to go astray, and lose themselves in the thick 
mists of religious error. The world was full of Gentile 
idolatry when the Gospel appeared. Its presence brought 
light into the thick darkness; but it did not seal up the 
sources of delusion in the human heart. The course of 
Divine truth, in every age, has been a constant warfare, and 
not a triumphal progress; and its fullest victories are still to 
come. The interpretation of the Bible, then, has had a 
checkered course. Much precious truth has been unfolded; 
but no slight amount of human error, in various and diverg¬ 
ent forms, has mingled with these expositions. The stream, 
however pure the fountain, has become turbid in its prog¬ 
ress, and stained by the soil from the river-bed in which it 
had . to flow. It is easy to dwell on this human side of the 
literature of the Bible, till the real excellency of the Word 
of God is quite obscured from our view. The trifling of 
mere verbal critics and grammarians, the strifes of inter¬ 
preters, the dreams of mystics, the subtilties of schoolmen, 
the confusing influence of the mental parallax, in ten 
thousand minds, of different ages, countries, and modes of 
thought, may produce a feeling of almost hopeless perplex¬ 
ity. We may then be urged to cast the whole aside, as 
mere heaps of misdirected and useless learning; and to com¬ 
mence the study anew on a simpler principle, which sees 
nothing more, in these inspired oracles of God, than curi¬ 
ous and interesting specimens of religious feeling, and val¬ 
uable productions of human genius, in the earlier youth or 
earlier infancy of mankind. 

The time is not distant, when a loud warning was raised, 
within the English Church, against the dangers of private 
judgment, and the maxim of Yincentius, on Catholic con¬ 
sent, was praised as the guardian angel of Christian 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 263 

orthodox^ No private Christian was reckoned able to in¬ 
terpret, with safety, even the simplest messages of the Bible, 
unless sustained and protected by a catena of authorities, 
and some approach to “a unanimous consent of the fa¬ 
thers.” The pendulum seems now to have swung violently 
the other way. The latest voice from the same cloisters 
assures the youthful and ingenuous student, that all the 
past labors of Christian divines are a hinderance, and not a 
help, to the attainment of Scriptural knowledge; that they 
are stumbling-blocks in his path, and not way-marks, to 
guide his steps in the pathway of Divine truth. He has 
only to renounce them, and study the Bible for himself, 
like any other book, and he will enter more fully into its 
meaning than all the controversial writers of former ages 
put together. 

Now, there can be no doubt that much evil has arisen 
from reading the Bible with preconceived opinions, and 
through the colored spectacles of human systems. Chris¬ 
tians have thus often robbed their souls of the rich diversity 
of doctrine, precept, and example, and all spiritual wisdom, 
which is found in the unforced and genuine teaching of the 
Word of Grod. But there may be an equal danger on the 
opposite side. To despise human aids is no less dangerous 
than to exaggerate their value. If young students, with 
unfurnished minds and unprepared hearts, rush to the 
study of the Bible, as to that of Sophocles or Caesar, in the 
conviction that by their solitary research, and dealing with 
it as the mere work of human authors, they will outstrip at 
once all the divines of past ages, they will soon illustrate 
one of its most elementary truths, that “pride goeth before 
destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” 

The maxim lately propounded as the master-key of the¬ 
ology; to interpret the Bible like any other book, is one of 
those half-truths, which have often the mischievous effect 


264 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of entire falsehood. For the Bible is like other books, and 
it is unlike them. It resembles them in being the work of 
various human authors, whose circumstances, tastes, and 
habits of thought and language, tinge and color each sep¬ 
arate portion. But it differs from them, because it is the 
Word of the Holy Gfhost, and a Divine unity of supernat¬ 
ural truth and wisdom animates the whole, and makes it 
instinct throughout with the mind of that Spirit, who 
“searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of Gfod.” 
To insist on the former truth, and to deny the second, which 
is higher and more weighty, is not to simplify, but to fals¬ 
ify its interpretation. Unbelief is the starting-point of such 
a mode of study, and therefore unbelief is its natural and 
necessary consummation. 

There are four main principles which form the key to 
the right study of the Scriptures. Two of these depend on 
the character of the Bible, and two others on the circum¬ 
stances of those to whom it is given. We must study it 
intelligently and naturally , as composed of works written by 
human authors, and molded, in each part, by the circum¬ 
stances which occasioned its composition. We must study' 
it reverently , as the inspired Word of Gfod, endued with a 
fuller meaning, and a deeper unity of truth and wisdom 
than the separate writers could supply. In the words of St. 
Paul, we must receive it, “not as the word of man, but as 
the Word of Gfod, which effectually worketh in those who 
believe.” We must read it with a direct , honest exercise 
of our own judgment on its contents, joined with prayer for 
the promised teaching of the Spirit. But that teaching is 
no where promised to mere self-will and presumption. We 
must read it, therefore, in the diligent use of all those helps 
which the providence of God may put within our reach , 
through the labors of the servants of Christ, the written or 
spoken ministry of the Word of Gfod. It is mainly by these 


THE INTERPRETATION OE SCRIPTURE. 


265 


“joints and bands” that the mystical body of Christ is 
nourished with Divine truth, as its heavenly food, and “ be¬ 
ing knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.” 
Lastly ; the recognition of the Bible as Divine, and full of 
deeper meaning than the earlier writers of it attained to 
know, is far from leading, as some have untruly affirmed, to 
endless doubt and uncertainty. On the contrary, it is the 
only way by which the soul can ever gain a footing on the 
solid rock of eternal truth'. Even if we could revive, in all 
their first freshness and youth, which is impossible, the 
thoughts and feelings of certain good, but imperfect and 
ignorant Jewish patriots, who lived long ago, this would 
still leave us as far as ever from any sure knowledge of the 
truth of God. It is only when we read the Bible as “the 
lively oracles of God,” and the “words of the Holy Ghost,” 
and thus discern the outlines of redemption, by an incar¬ 
nate and atoning Savior, reaching through all its messages, 
from Genesis to Bevelation, from Paradise to the Last 
Judgment, that our feet are truly planted upon firm 
ground. We know what, and we know also in whom , we 
believe; and instead of being carried to and fro, with every 
wind of false doctrine, we grow up, with steady and contin¬ 
ual progress, into the full unity of the faith and the knowl¬ 
edge of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

I. The first maxim of sound interpretation is to read and 
study the Bible, in the truth of its human character. It 
is a book composed of many books, each having its own 
distinct author, and wearing the marks of its human au¬ 
thorship in every page. This maxim, in one of the- recent 
Essays, is a nucleus of truth, around which have crystal¬ 
lized many and dangerous errors. But the truth itself is 
not the less important and needful for the Christian student 
to bear in mind. 

There is a mechanical view of Bible inspiration, which 
23 


266 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

shuts out, and practically denies, the human element in its 
composition. It reduces the whole process, so mysterious, 
and, possibly, so various in its nature, by which the Spirit 
of God overruled and guided the sacred penman, to one 
dull monotony of mere verbal dictation. In 4 its rigor this 
has seldom been held by theological writers, at least of late 
years; but whenever stress is laid simply on the result of 
the inspiration in writing, irrespective of the thoughts and 
feelings of the sacred writers, there is a close approach to 
this view. An element, which is made unimportant, and 
quite superfluous, is in reality set aside. But in popular 
Christianity, this is the view entertained, wherever tradi¬ 
tional orthodoxy and spiritual idleness make a league to¬ 
gether. To realize the human features of the books of 
Scripture, and through them to reach the full sense of its 
Divine unity, requires patient diligence and persevering 
thought. It is much easier and simpler to receive all simply 
as the Word of God, and then to expound it by our own pre¬ 
conceived tastes, feelings, and habits of thought; without 
caring to inquire into its original meaning, or to realize 
those aspects of it which carry us out of ourselves, and 
place us amid the wonders of Providence in distant ages. 

The simple truth is, that in reading the Bible, we can 
not get rid of a human element. We may fail to apprehend 
those which properly belong to it, from the character and 
circumstances of the sacred writers themselves; but we are 
sure, in this case, to replace them with others, borrowed 
from our own circumstances and mental associations. To 
travel out of ourselves, and to rise above ourselves, are the 
first steps in attaining the mind of God. We can not know 
God in his absolute being, but only as revealed, and re¬ 
vealed in his Word. Even in his Word, we can not appre¬ 
hend the Divine elements, except through the human. We 
must pass out of ourselves, first of all, into sympathy with 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 


267 


the “holy men of God,” by whom the Scriptures were 
written; and, through communion with their testimonies, 
thoughts, and feelings, must rise into fellowship with that 
Spirit by whom they spoke, and that Lord to whom they 
all bear witness. All systematic theology, all conventional 
phraseology, and all limited and local forms of Christian 
experience, tend to contract an element of unreality in their 
use of Scripture, which can only be remedied by a perpet¬ 
ual return to the living fountains. The student who would 
retain the simplicity of faith, must so far obey the advice 
to “transfer himself to another age, imagine that he is a 
disciple of Christ or of Paul, and disengage himself from 
all that follows.” He must have no theological “ theory of 
interpretation, but a few rules guarding against common 
errors.” His object must be “to read the Scripture with a 
real and not merely a conventional interest; to open his 
eyes, and see and imagine things as they truly were.” For 
just as it was through the human actions of our Lord—his 
hunger and thirst, his fasting in the wilderness, his sleep on 
the pillow, his tears over Jerusalem—that his Divine glory 
slowly revealed itself to his first disciples, till they saw it 
to be “the glory of the Only-Begotten of the Father;” so 
it is through a more vivid sense of the human elements of 
the Bible, that we rise most safely and surely to the sense 
of its Divine unity, its wondrous fertility of goodness, wis¬ 
dom, and love. When we lose sight of these elements it 
runs the risk of being mechanized and degraded into a 
mere school-book, or a string of texts without order or 
cohesion. It is only as they are restored, and come fully 
into view, that we realize it as one vast scheme of revela¬ 
tion, overarching, like the bow of heaven, all the six thou¬ 
sand years of the history of the world. 

II. The Bible, then, must be read and studied, first of 
all, as a collection of authentic human writings, through 


268 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


fifteen centuries, from Moses to the beloved St. John. 
This will add new life and freshness to the fulfillment of 
the Christian duties of Scripture reading and meditation. 

But must we read it as a merely human work? Must 
we forget or deny, because it had various human writers, 
that the whole is due to one higher Author, the revealing 
Spirit of God? This is the great question really at issue 
between the Christian Church in all ages, and a limited 
number of modern critics, who aspire to represent the prog¬ 
ress, and really herald the predicted unbelief, of these last 
days. Must we, with “Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit,” 
flout at the practice of bringing together texts, “a whole 
millennium apart,” in illustration of doctrinal or practical 
lessons; though justified by the clear example of St. Paul, 
and of our Lord himself? Or shall we not allow that, 
amidst the human diversity, a Divine unity reigns in these 
sacred Scriptures; because every part is the Word of that 
God to whom all his works are known from the beginning, 
and with whom a thousand years are as one day? This, in 
brief, is the main question at issue, and one to which it 
becomes every Christian to give a clear and distinct reply. 

In the first place, the principle which an unbelieving 
criticism would cast aside, is laid down in the New Testa¬ 
ment itself, as the first and most essential law of Bible in¬ 
terpretation. St. Peter, in that Second Epistle, which 
would-be critics reject as spurious, but one sentence of 
which far outweighs, in solid worth, all their disquisitions, 
propounds this doctrine in the plainest and most emphatic 
terms. “ Know this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is 
of self-interpretation; for prophecy came not at any time 
by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 

The reasoning here is simple, and easy to understand. 
The Idta knikuaiq, or “private interpretation,” denotes the 


\ 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 269 

construction of each separate portion of Scripture by itself 
alone, as if it formed a complete whole, proceeding from 
some human author. This is a false view of its nature. 
It is one out of many messages of the Holy Ghost. It is 
one component in a great series of utterances of Divine 
truth, from Adam and Enoch down to the last of the apos¬ 
tles. To attain its full meaning and purpose, therefore, it 
is absolutely needful to bear in mind its true character. 
Read it merely as an independent voice of man, and you 
will fail to interpret it aright. Read it as one out of many 
messages, given by the same Holy Spirit, though under 
special circumstances, and with features due to the charac¬ 
ter of the messenger he has chosen, and you have a 
key to its true and just interpretation. We must, therefore, 
exactly reverse the false maxim which has been lately pro¬ 
pounded, and affirm, on the authority of the inspired apos¬ 
tle, that “illustration of one part of Scripture by another, 
must not be confined to the writings of the same age, and 
the same authors, far less to the same author, in the same 
period of his life.” It is not true, in spiritual any more 
than in natural astronomy, that the planets move in orbits 
wholly independent, that they exercise no mutual influence, 
and have no common law of relation to that central Sun of 
righteousness on whom they absolutely depend. 

But this great truth, which rests firmly on the authority 
of the inspired apostle, is confirmed still more fully by the 
sayings of our Lord himself, and the constant practice of 
all the writers of the New Testament. We have been told 
that “the new truth introduced into the Old Testament, 
rather than the old truth found there, was the conversion 
and salvation of the world.”* This is a corollary which 
follows unavoidably from a purely human view, in which 


* Essay vii, p. 406. 




270 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


we interpret the Scriptures “ like any other book;” that is, 
with a steadfast refusal to own in it the presence of a Divine 
element, or the real voice of the Spirit of God. But this 
view, however gentle the phrase in which it may be con¬ 
veyed, really gives the lie direct to our Lord and his . apos¬ 
tles. Their constant, emphatic testimony is, not that they 
are putting new truths into the Old Testament, or palming 
on it a new sense foreign from its genuine significance; but 
that they simply unfolded its true meaning and reference, 
when the Spirit of Christ in the prophets “testified before¬ 
hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should 
follow.” Those who reject this constant doctrine of our 
Lord, and of the whole New Testament, may be learned 
and ingenious speculators in Christian literature; but it is 
hard to see in what sense they can be disciples of Christ, 
while they contradict the Lord of glory in one main and 
conspicuous part of his teaching, on which his claim to 
submission and reverence is made, by his own lips, to de¬ 
pend. “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed 
me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believed not his writ¬ 
ings, how shall ye believe my words?” “0 fools, and slow 
of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 
Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to 
enter into glory? And beginning at Moses and all the 
prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the 
things concerning himself.” He, whose name is the Truth, 
did not, in the hour of his resurrection, enact the part of a 
spiritual juggler, and foist a reference to himself into texts, 
of which the true meaning was wholly different; in order, 
by this pious lie of representing the “new truth intro¬ 
duced” as “the old truth of the New Testament,” to effect 
the conversion and salvation of the world. The supposition 
is little short of a monstrous blasphemy. No, he rebuked 
the blindness of his disciples; who, like many modern critics, 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 271 

could not see, and were too foolish to believe, what those 
Scriptures really contained. He opened their understand¬ 
ing, to see the landscape which was there already, but 
which the scales of their spiritual ignorance had previously 
concealed from their view. Then all was plain to their 
opened eyes and quickened hearts; and through reproach, 
affliction, and martyrdom, they bore witness to Christ in the 
midst of malicious adversaries, “saying none other things 
than those which the prophets and Moses did say should 
come; that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the 
first that should, rise from the dead, and should show light 
unto the people and to the Gentiles.”. Acts xxvi, 22, 23. 

The same great truth, which is confirmed by the uniform 
consent of all the writers of the New Testament, and by 
the plainest sayings of our Lord himself, has also a nega¬ 
tive proof in the confusion and perplexity of those critics, 
who venture to contradict it, and cast it aside. If the Old 
Testament be in truth the Word of God, it must be clear 
that no consistent explanation of it can be given on the 
contrary hypothesis, that it is a series of purely human 
writings. Our Lord was a Jewish peasant; but whoever 
strove to account for his words and works, on the hypothe¬ 
sis that he was a Jewish peasant only, must have plunged 
himself at every step into contradiction and absurdity. 
Even the officers of the Pharisees were forced to own— 
“Never man spoke like this man;” and unbelievers, under 
the momentary impression of his miracles, were led to con¬ 
fess—“This is of a truth that Prophet that should come 
into the world.” 

Now, the case is precisely similar with the Scriptures of 
the Old Testament. A learned school of naturalist critics 
have labored to expound and analyze them, on the negative 
view of their character. And what is the result of la¬ 
bors conducted on such principles? The authenticity and 


272 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


integrity of the books of Moses, of the prophecies of 
Isaiah and- Daniel, of Joshua and Judges, in short, of all 
the main portions of the canon, in spite of the full exter¬ 
nal evidence in their favor, melt away and disappear. 
The facts, as they stand, will not agree with the hypothesis, 
and must be tortured and transformed,, in order to obtain 
some decent show of consistency. That holy and perfect 
law, honored both by our Lord and his apostles, and all the 
prophets, as the gift of God, by his servant Moses, and 
placed from the hour of its completion beside the ark of the 
covenant in the holy of holies, has to be dissolved into a 
cento of fragments, a patchwork of imaginary documents, 
which the names of the Most High God are profaned in 
order to describe, due to some unknown and obscure com¬ 
pilers in the time of the kings. The very first chapter of 
Genesis must be degraded into a piece of unscrupulous 
guess-work, by some “Hebrew Descartes or Newton,” who 
affirmed in the dark what he had no means of knowing, 
because he had not been trained in the modesty of modern 
science! The blessing of Jacob on his sons is turned, from 
*a sacred prophecy, into a legendary fiction, of the time of 
Samson—in other words, into a manifest lie. The blessing 
of Moses, in like manner, is transferred to some mendacious 
author, in the times of David or Salomon. The book of 
Judges is turned from plain history into a new and singular 
Epos, of which the only poetical feature consists in the 
substitution of false dates for true ones. One-half* of 
Isaiah’s prophecies are wrested from the author to whom 
all antiquity, and the words of our Lord and his apostles 
assign them, and are referred to Baruch, or some apocry¬ 
phal hand, to make the task rather less unmanageable, 
of stripping them of all their prophetic character. In the 
same way the writings of the beloved Daniel, referred to by 
our Lord as the words of “Daniel the prophet,” and 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 273 

appropriated and applied to liimself in the most solemn act 
of his public testimony before the high-priest, are turned 
into*a base imposture of the time of the Maccabees; that 
prophecies plainly Divine, if genuine, may be expounded as 
meager summaries of past history, which have been im¬ 
piously disguised by a preface of angelic visions, in ordSr 
to make the imposture more complete. 

Now, these results, however hateful and abominable in 
the eyes of the devout Christian, are only the natural fruits 
of that negative criticism, which labors to expound the Old 
Testament as a series of merely human writings. The 
Divine element in them, wherever it comes plainly to light, 
must then be got rid of by some critical violence or other. 
And this violence reveals itself by endless inconsistency 
and vacillation. The false witnesses against the authority 
and Divinity of the written Word, frame successively plausi¬ 
ble hypotheses, in which charges of untruth are expressed 
or implied, “but neither so doth their witness agree 
together.” Mythicism and naturalism, supplementary hy¬ 
potheses, crystallization hypotheses, documentary hypothe¬ 
ses, a twofold, a threefold, a fourfold, a fivefold authorship, 
have all been applied to the Pentateuch alone, but still the 
witness does not, and will not agree. Many picklocks 
have been tried in turn, but the wards are obstinate. Those 
who refuse to see in the Word of God a Divine authorship, 
are compelled to set aside Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel; but 
they can not tell how to replace them, or frame any con¬ 
sistent view of the human authorship, which will enable 
them to expunge the miracles and prophecies, and thus to 
reduce the whole to the level of common history. 

Let us take one or two examples, in detail, of the gen¬ 
eral truth. The Bible begins with a professed narrative of 
the creation of the world, and the first formation of man 
on the sixth day. Interpret like any other book, and one 


274 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of two conclusions must follow. We have here either an 
open imposture, or a supernatural revelation. A “Hebrew 
Descartes or Newton,” who, in total ignorance, should guess 
for himself what might have happened before the first man 
was in being, and then publish it as part of a Divine mes¬ 
sage, would simply prove himself a profane and dishonest 
liar. Thus, at the outset, every middle hypothesis is swept 
away. We must either interpret the Bible by moral rules, 
unlike those applied to any other work, or choose at once 
between branding it as a vile imposition and accepting it 
as Divine. But when once accepted as a Divine message, 
the attempt, by a series of critical artifices, to weed out of 
it all supernatural elements, is a course no less irrational 
and senseless than profane. 

Let us take one other instance—the three verses in Gen¬ 
esis, Psalms, and Hebrews, which refer to Melchisedek. On 
the humanist view, the first of these was a mere accident, 
in the contents of some “ Elohistic document,” an early 
“monogram” on Chedarlaomer, which happened to get in¬ 
serted by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. The verse 
in Psalm cx, 4, which introduces the name of Melchisedek, 
in an oath ascribed to Jehovah, must have been a mere 
poetical fiction of Da»vid, or some unknown writer, who ven¬ 
tured to take the name of God in vain, and ascribe to him 
a solemn oath, of which the writer knew nothing. The 
whole chapter, again, in Hebrews, must be a piece of labori¬ 
ous trifling, in which the weightiest conclusions are based on 
the premise of a mere accidental omission of names in Gen¬ 
esis, and a mere fiction of the Psalmist; while the forms 
of reasoning are abused to give an appearance ,of argument, 
where there is nothing more than the wildest caprice of 
fanciful interpretation. And still the upshot of this acci¬ 
dent in Genesis, this profane fiction in the Psalmist, and 
this capricious folly in the apostle, is to bring out one 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 275 

of the noblest utterances of Christian doctrine, and one of 
the most cheering messages of comfort and promise to the 
weary heart. “Wherefore he is able also to save them to 
the uttermost that come to God by him, seeing he ever 
liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high- 
priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate 

from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.For 

the law maketh men high-priests which have infirmity; but 
the word of that oath, which was since the law, maketh the 
Son who is perfected for evermore.” Is this a hypothesis 
credible? Can we believe that such glorious issues of truth 
and holiness, such beautiful and lovely forms of comfort, 
hope, and promise, are the results of chance and caprice, 
of profane fiction, and childish folly? 

Now, let us reverse the picture, and contemplate the 
same passages in their true light. “All Scripture,” from 
Genesis to Revelation, “is given by inspiration of God.” 
In every part, “holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost.” To this revealing Spirit the 
remotely past and the remotely future are equally open, for 
“known unto God are all his works from the beginning,” 
and “ the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things 
of God.” It was the Holy Spirit, who, more than three 
thousand years ago, guided Moses, in his inspired narrative, 
to make this brief mention of Melchisedek, and his blessing 
on Abraham, and to omit purposely, all mention of his 
father, or mother, or genealogy; and introduce him sud¬ 
denly into the scene as a mysterious person, a priest of the 
Most High God, standing above the father of the faithful, 
in dignity and honor-, aloof and alone. It was the Spirit, 
nearly three thousand years ago, who taught David to give 
the title of Lord to his own son, as a pledge of Messiah’s 
Divine glory; and revealed to him that oath of God con¬ 
cerning this unborn son of David, which could never else 



276 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


have been known—“The Lord sware, and will not repent, 
Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedek.” 
It was the same Holy Spirit, who, eighteen hundred years 
ago, taught the apostle to expound to the Church the sig¬ 
nificance of the original history, two thousand years after 
it had occurred, in which the silence concerning Melchise- 
dek’s parentage and genealogy rendered him a type of the 
heavenly priesthood of thew risen Son of God; to unfold the 
meaning of the oath in the Psalm, as the prophecy of a 
higher priesthood than that of Aaron, which the true Mes¬ 
siah would fulfill, and over which mortality had no power; 
and, last of all, to apply the whole in a glorious message 
of comfort to the Church of Christ. And it is the same 
Spirit, who now, in these our own days, has caused these 
his own words, by his wonderful Providence, to he diffused 
in millions of copies, and in countless languages, through¬ 
out the tribes of the earth; and then applies them, by his 
secret power and grace, to quicken the faith, and cheer the 
hearts of millions of believers, by the vision of their Great 
Iligh-Priest, who intercedes for them perpetually before the 
throne in heaven. 

III. Another question must now be answered. Private 
judgment, there can be no doubt, must be exercised, with 
prayer and humility, by every real student of the Word of 
God. A mere blind reception of the dicta of human au¬ 
thority, without thought or personal inquiry, is a super¬ 
stitious counterfeit, and widely different from real Christian 
faith. But is it the wisest and safest course, in the ac¬ 
quirement of true spiritual knowledge, for every novice to 
start anew? Ought he to approach the Bible, like Soph¬ 
ocles or Plato, as a human work, to be mastered by “the 
plain meaning of words and their context alone,” and to 
discard all the Christian writings of the last eighteen hund¬ 
red years, and all the criticism and theology to which they 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 277 

have given birth, as a mere incubus and troublesome 
burden, which must be wholly cast aside, in order to gain 
insight into the true meaning? Such a view involves a 
strange inversion of the lessons of humility and true 
wisdom. 

The contempt for human helps in the knowledge of 
Scripture, may assume two opposite forms, one of intel¬ 
lectual pride, and the other of fanatical presumption. It is 
hard to say which is the more dangerous. The former 
neglects or denies the promise of the Spirit, and professes 
to rely on human industry alone. The latter abuses the 
promise of the Holy Gihost, in order to justify a neglect 
of helps which he himself has graciously provided for the 
people of Christ, and to disguise a rash confidence in 
the hasty and unripe conclusions of one’s own private un¬ 
derstanding. 

The Bible is a rich treasury of Divine truth. But the 
nature and purpose of this record, as designed for the in¬ 
struction of the Church, in every age, requires the truth 
to be given in its most condensed form. It is perfect for 
the object for' which it was really given, but not for other 
objects, for which distinct and collateral provision was also 
made. One of the chief of these is the expansion of the 
truth contained in the Scriptures, and its application to the 
varying circumstances and characters of individuals, and to 
the multiplied changes and experience of the whole Church 
of Christ. For this end a living ministry was expressly 
ordained, both under the Law and the Gospel, and its im¬ 
portance for the instruction and guidance of believers is 
commended in the strongest terms. A nursery full of seeds 
does not exclude, but requires, the labor and care of many 
gardeners, if its own purpose is to be really fulfilled, and 
countless landscapes are to be adorned with the fruits of 
Autumn and the flowers of Spring. The Bible is such a 


278 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


spiritual nursery; and the answer of the Ethiopian eunuch 
to Philip’s inquiry, “How can I understand, except some 
man shall guide me?” expresses Die usual law of God’s 
providence in the use of human agents and ministers, to 
convey the clear knowledge of its truths to their fellow-men. 

It would be most unwise, it is true, for the youthful stu¬ 
dent to begin his course by collecting a cumbrous apparatus 
of human authors, instead of coming directly and simply to 
the words of Scripture, with the honest desire to learn from 
them their true meaning. Such a plan would hedge up his 
way with thorns, and render very difficult any real access 
to the truth of God. But it is hardly less unwise to imagine 
that he will advance most safely and rapidly by rejecting 
all the labors of critics and theologians, and relying on his 
own skill and industry alone. Theology is the first and 
noblest of the sciences. The Bible supplies the materials, 
in rich variety, by which alone that science can be attained. 
But it needs much patient thought, much meditation on 
Divine things, the comparison of spiritual things with spir¬ 
itual in prayer and humility, in order to “wax ripe and 
strong ” in the knowledge of Christ, and to pass out of 
spiritual infancy into the firm intelligence of full manhood, 
or the ripened wisdom of the “fathers in Christ.” Where, 
in the providence of God, other helps are denied, it may be 
hard to assign a limit to the Christian light and wisdom, 
which may be attained by solitary meditation on the Scrip¬ 
tures alone. But such circumstances, and such a Baptist¬ 
like calling, are exceptional and rare. In most cases i* is 
either laziness or pride, which leads a young Christian to 
dispense with the aid derivable from human teachers and 
writings, and either heresy, or great spiritual barrenness, is 
the only result which can be expected to follow. Direct 
meditation on the Word of God ought ever to take preced¬ 
ence of the study even of the best human critics or com- 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 279 

mentators. Direct comparison of truth with truth, aud 
Scripture with Scripture, far more than a perusal of the 
soundest system of divinity, must be the basis of a living 
and real theology. But contempt for the aid of theolog¬ 
ical writings is always an unhealthy sign, whether it arises 
from the mere self-conceit of intellectual pride, or disguises 
itself under a vail of spiritual phrases, and a claim to a 
simple dependence on the promised guidance of the Spirit 
of God. It is not the lazy or the self-conceited, but the 
humble and diligent, to whom the promise belongs, of being 
guided by teaching of that blessed Spirit into all truth. 

IV. The question with regard to the single and double, 
or triple sense of Scripture, its types and symbolisms, and 
real or supposed hidden meanings, is far too wide to enter 
upon at the close of this chapter. But a few remarks 
seem required, on that charge of total uncertainty, which 
has been brought against the whole mass of received Bibli¬ 
cal interpretation. “The book,” it is asserted, “in which 
we believe all religious truth to be contained, is the most 
uncertain of all books, because interpreted by arbitrary and 
uncertain methods.” 

Is this a true and just accusation? The heart and con¬ 
science of every devout and intelligent Christian will answer 
at once, that it is a monstrous inversion of the truth. No 
doubt if we collect in one mass, all that has been written 
on the Bible, in criticism, commentary, and controversy, for 
eighteen hundred years, and seek to winnow out all the 
chaff of error, ignorance, heresy, and folly, we may be al¬ 
most choked and stifled by its vast amount. But this is due 
to the immense variety of the Biblical literature, reaching 
through so many ages and countries of the world, and en¬ 
countering a thousand tendencies to delusion and error in 
the hearts of men. If we take, on the one hand, those 
views of Christian doctrine and duty, which tens of 


280 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


thousands of humble and earnest disciples are receiving 
daily from their study of the Word of God, though tinged 
and colored, here and there, by the influences of education, 
personal feeling, and local or ecclesiastical tradition; or 
single out those works of theology, which have formed and 
molded the main current of our Christian literature, there 
will be found a great and even marvelous unity, both in the 
simpler outlines of Divine truth, and in its fuller and more 
scientific development. The impression of complexity, dis¬ 
order, and confusion, of which such complaints are made, 
and which are used to terrify the young students into a 
total rejection of Christian theology, is like the result which 
would be produced if we were to collect all the mistakes 
of astronomical theories and calculations, from the time of 
the Chaldeans downward, mingling them with all the dreams 
of astrology, and then should advise the young astronomer 
to reject all instruments, and all mathematical theories of the 
solar and starry systems, with the copious accumulation 
of facts in so many observatories, and to betake himself, 
with the naked eye alone, to direct the study of the heavens. 
This would be no progress into clearer light, but a back¬ 
ward plunge into childish ignorance again. Astronomy is 
the most certain of all the sciences. But this certainty is 
not gained by resting in the first impressions of the senses 
on the motions of the stars, but by using them and multi¬ 
plying them by assiduous observation, increasing their accu¬ 
racy by instrumental aids, and thus rising through them, 
and beyond them, to a knowledge of the true system of the 
starry universe. 

The same law applies to Christian theology. It can not 
be gained by neglecting the letter of the Scriptures; but it 
will never be reached by a superficial, self-confident ap¬ 
proach to them, in the neglect of all aid from Christian 
teachers and guides, as human writings to be scanned by 


THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 281 

critical industry alone. The Bible. is the most certain 
of all books, and its theology the surest and highest of all 
sciences, when it is read with prayer, with humility, with 
perseverance, in dependence on the promised teaching of 
the Spirit of God, and in the use of all the varied helps 
which he has provided for his Church, comparing spiritual 
things with spiritual, - searching for heavehly wisdom as for 
hidden treasure. And this certainty rests upon the firm¬ 
est ground, the direct promise of God himself, given to 
every humble and sincere inquirer—“If thou criest after 
knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if 
thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid 
treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, 

and find the knowledge of God.” 

24 


282 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 

The apparent discordance between different statements in 
the histories of the Bible has often been made a powerful 
objection to the doctrine of its inspiration. The subject is 
one which naturally branches out into many details, impos¬ 
sible to compress within narrow limits. I shall, therefore, 
in the present chapter, confine myself chiefly to some gen¬ 
eral remarks, on some of the main difficulties which have 
perplexed the minds of many inquirers, and obscured their 
faith in the Divine authority of the Word of God. 

1. Every word of God is pure, and, when it proceeds 
from its Divine source, must be free from all error. Such 
is the instinctive conviction of every devout and intelligent 
mind. On the other hand, the Bible is not strictly and ab¬ 
solutely free from all error, in the shape in which it actually 
reaches the great majority of its readers. Translations, 
however trustworthy, are not completely perfect. The 
transmission of the text, by copyists, may introduce a 
small amount of deviation from the first original. In 
so large a work, numbers and names in the genealogies are 
peculiarly liable to suffer from successive transcriptions. It 
is thus admitted fully, by all well-informed critics and 
divines, that the inspiration of the Bible does not require 
or secure theoretic and mathematical freedom from error, 
when it reaches the great bulk of its readers, and fulfills 
its great practical object, as a revelation to mankind at 
large. Slight errors of transmission and translation may 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 283 

intrude, and have intruded, without destroying its authority 
and inspiration, or detracting in any perceptible degree from 
its practical worth. 

2. Some writers, starting from this admission, have been 
disposed to proceed a step further. While admitting, per¬ 
haps, an ideal perfection of the Divine messages, before 
they are clothed in words, they suppose them to contract a 
degree of error and imperfection, as soon as they are em¬ 
bodied in human language. The substance of the thought, 
or doctrine, is owned to be Divine, but all the details, the 
phrases v the form, the historical circumstances, are supposed 
to be liable to mistake, and partial falsehood. In this way 
all difficulties, arising from apparent contradictions and his¬ 
torical discrepancies, are, in their judgment, easily and 
entirely removed. In the Gospels, for example, harmonists 
are rebuked for striving to establish an agreement which 
does not exist, and for refusing to see numerous contradic¬ 
tions between the different narratives; and when they ought 
rather to^iave owned freely this human imperfection in the 
Evangelists, and only to have seen in it a proof of their 
honesty, and of the substantial truth of the message so 
variously given. 

This view, however simple and plausible it may appear 
at the first glance, is open to two grave and insurmountable 
difficulties. First, it evacuates the force of all those pas¬ 
sages in which our Lord and his apostles appeal to the 
written Word, not only in the mass, but even in the sep¬ 
arate clauses, reason upon the force of single words, and 
affirm that “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than 
for one tittle of the law to fail.” And next, it seems to 
annul, to a great extent, the main purpose for which the 
messages of God were recorded in a written form. This 
purpose was evidently to secure at once the purity and the 
permanence of revealed truth, which, in mere oral tradition, 


284 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


is liable either to be corrupted by false additions, or to 
fade away into gradual oblivion. Now, so far as human 
error was permitted to intrude into the original writing, this 
object would be precisely reversed. As far as this intrusion 
extends, error would be imposed with the sanction of truth 
on every later age, would receive a wider currency, and 
acquire a greater permanence than it could otherwise have 
attained. 

This view, then, of an intermittent, imperfect inspiration, 
which would leave room for an undefined amount of histor¬ 
ical error, and maintain a substantial truth of doctrine 
alone, removes seeming difficulties, by abandoning the double 
evidence, d priori and d posteriori , from reason and from 
the express testimony of our Lord, on which the doctrine 
itself depends. It must therefore be, in almost every in¬ 
stance, a mere landing-place, either in the departure from 
traditional faith, into an entire rejection of the Bible, or in 
the upward progress to a fuller and firmer acceptance 
of its truth, and of its entire authority over the consciences 
of men. 

3. Let us inquire, then, whether the difficulties which 
have seemed so formidable to some critics and divines, re¬ 
tain their force* on a closer examination; or whether they 
are not really phantoms which disappear before a rigid and 
exact inquiry. 

Here, first of all, it is needful to get rid of an ambigu- 
ity, by which the true question has often been obscured. 
Discrepancy may be used' in the sense either of simple 
divergence or of positive contradiction. Differences of the 
former kind can create no real difficulty. When two or 
three inspired accounts are given of the same general series 
of events, there is no reason, but quite the reverse, why 
one should simply repeat the other, without any variation. 
By this means, in reality, nearly the whole benefit of a 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 285 

double and triple testimony would be lost. It was a maxim 
of the law, that “in the mouth of two or three witnesses 
every word should be established.” But, to fulfill this law, 
it is needful that the testimonies should be really distinct. 
Some partial divergence in the details recorded, or in the 
molding of the narrative, is plainly desirable, and almost 
essential, that this main object of a plural testimony may 
be fully attained- It is only such divergence as implies, a 
direct and real contradiction, or the partial falsehood of one 
statement, which can furnish a real argument against 
plenary and complete inspiration. 

4. Again, one statement of the true doctrine of inspira¬ 
tion is found in those words of the apostle, that “ God at 
sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past to 
the fathers by the prophets.” Here three truths are con¬ 
tained, with a gradation in their importance, which com¬ 
plete the true and full idea of Divine inspiration. First, it 
was God himself who spoke by the prophets. The mes¬ 
sages are truly and properly the words of God. Next, he 
spoke by the prophets, not by copying machines, but by 
living men, who were also “holy men of God.” 2 Pet. i, 
21. This teaches us that the human faculties of the mes¬ 
sengers were not superseded, but fully employed. St. Luke 
wrote after having gained “perfect information of the facts 
from the beginning;” and St. Paul’s epistles were written 
“according to the wisdom given unto him.” The first 
phrase excludes a lax and partial inspiration; and the sec¬ 
ond, a mechanical dictation, in which the natural and spir¬ 
itual endowments of the messengers, instead of being 
perfected, are set aside. Thirdly, it was “in many parts 
and many modes or forms.” One feature in the Scriptures, 
thus prominently stated, is the freedom and variety of the 
types or molds in which various portions of it are cast. 
There is here implied the retention, in each case, of special 


286 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and individual characters, arising from the form of the 
communication—as history, Psalm, proverb, or prophecy— 
and also from the distinct position of every writer. The 
diversity arising from the human authorship is here recog¬ 
nized as one part of the truth, side by side with the unity 
of their common character as being alike the messages of 
God. But this principle will clearly have the fullest appli¬ 
cation to parallel histories; since here the distinctness and 
concurrence of testimonies must be one chief object implied 
in the very form of the revelation. Sameness would thus 
defeat one main purpose for which the parallel histories are 
given. In these cases, of which the chief instances are 
Kings and Chronicles in the Old Testament, and the four 
Gospels in the New, it is most reasonable, even on the 
view of their plenary inspiration, to expect the fullest 
measure of diversity, which is consistent with the general 
sameness of the narrative, and with the avoidance of pos¬ 
itive contradiction. 

5. The Scriptures, again, are a selection of truth in its 
most condensed form, to suit their purpose as a compre¬ 
hensive and permanent record, which, if it became too vo¬ 
luminous, would fail of its main object, and cease to be 
generally accessible. This character runs throughout the 
whole of the Bible. Within one volume of moderate size 
we have a sacred history, ranging through four thousand 
years, copious patterns of devotion, proverbs of wisdom, 
sacred dramas, meditations on human life and its vanity, 
prophecies of the events of distant ages, four biographies 
of our Lord, a brief and full history of the apostolic 
Church, and various letters containing an ample outline of 
Christian doctrine, duty, and experience. The contrast be¬ 
tween the brevity of Scripture and the ample material out 
of which the selection is made, is expressed at the close 
of the fourth Gospel: “ And there are many other things 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 287 

which Jesus did, which, if they should be written every 
one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain 
the books that should be written.” So, in the last book 
of Scripture, the prophet, in one case, is expressly restrained 
from writing what he has seen and heard, while in other 
cases a repeated command to write is given him. 

Now, this remark sets aside at once a frequent source of 
false reasoning and critical illusion. The silence of a sacred 
historian about certain facts, is no proof, and even no pre¬ 
sumption, that they were unknown to him. It is quite 
enough to account for their absence, if they did not fall 
within the special scope of his message. To take one in¬ 
stance, it has often been said that St. Matthew knows 
nothing of Joseph’s original home being Nazareth, and that 
St. Luke knows nothing of the flight into Egypt, or of the 
visit of the wise men. There is no warrant whatever for 
either statement. Silence is here no proof of ignorance; 
and the range of the narrative of each writer is no reason¬ 
able measure of the extent of his knowledge. None of 
them professes to write all that he knew. The last of them 
affirms the exact opposite in the strongest terms. It is 
clear, from the fourth Gospel, that St. Matthew must have 
been present at the resurrection of Lazarus, and still the 
name never occurs in the first Gospel. A similar remark 
applies to the two others. This great miracle belonged to 
the visits to Judea, which are systematically left out in the 
earlier accounts of the Galilean ministry. So, again, the 
mission of the Seventy must have been well known, both to 
St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. John, who make no allusion 
to it whatever. In like manner, St. Matthew’s special ob¬ 
ject, which was to show the fulfillment of the prophecies 
in the person of Christ, made Bethlehem, his predicted 
birthplace, the natural starting-point in his statement; 
while the historical character of St. Luke made it equally 


288 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


natural to record the place where Mary received the promise 
of the incarnation, and explain how a decree of the Roman 
Emperor led to the temporary removal to Bethlehem, and 
thus was the means of securing the fulfillment of Micah’s 
prophecy. 

6. Once more, the truth of history does not preclude, in 
its own nature, all variety in the order of arrangement. 
Events, it is true, can only happen in one succession; but 
all history implies a grouping of actions and discourses by 
a reference to other links than those of sequence alone. 
The two main laws of history are these, that events shall 
be grouped together according to the intimacy of their con¬ 
nection, and that each group shall be placed as nearly as 
possible in the order of time. The larger and fuller the 
groups that are formed, and the wider will be the deviation 
from a single chronological series. And thus histories often 
become less strictly chronological, as the historian discerns 
more clearly the causes of events, and has the skill to ar¬ 
range them by a deeper law than that of mere sequence in 
time. All discrepancies, then, in the Grospels, which consist 
only in differences of arrangement, are of no force to imply 
contradiction or falsehood, unless the true order of occur¬ 
rence has, in both cases, been plainly affirmed. 

7. Historical statements, again, have something which 
they assert, and something else which is merely probable 
inference, but will commonly be inferred in the absence 
of fuller evidence. Each of them is like a planet, with its 
solid nucleus of fact, and an attached atmosphere of prob¬ 
able conclusions. Let two planets come into contact, and 
the mass will be unaltered, but their atmospheres will be 
completely changed, and melt into one. So, when two tes¬ 
timonies concur, though equally true, each will usually 
modify the conclusions that would have been drawn from 
the other, while it stood, alone. We might conclude; for 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 289 

instance, from Num. xvi, that Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, 
all perished with their families; but Num. xxvi, 11, corrects 
this hasty inference, for it tells us plainly that “the chil¬ 
dren of Korah died not.” From Matt, xxi, 18, 21, we 
might easily suppose that the fig-tree cursed by our Lord 
withered at once under the eyes of the disciples; but from 
St. Mark’s account it is plain that a day and a night inter¬ 
vened before the result was noticed, and led to that impres¬ 
sive conversation. Again, from Luke ii, 39, we might 
infer that the return to Nazareth was immediately after the 
legal rites had been performed; but we find from St. Mat¬ 
thew that the flight into Egypt came between. In each 
-case there is no real contradiction. We have only to cor¬ 
rect, by fuller evidence, natural but unproved inferences 
from the original statement. There is contact, but no col¬ 
lision. The atmospheres only are altered, and two sets of 
mere inferences, that were incompatible, have been harmo¬ 
nized together. 

When these truths are borne in mind, there will be left 
only a few discrepancies, comparatively, in the pages of the 
Bible, which bear any signs of involving a real contradic¬ 
tion. It would be needless to trouble ourselves, in these 
cases, to discover probable or possible modes of reconcilia¬ 
tion, from any inherent importance of these variations. 
They affect the practical worth of the Bible as little as 
floating specks in the air can lessen the brightness of the 
sun at noonday. It is simply the proneness of men to find 
excuses for escaping from the authority of God’s messages, 
and the reverence due to the clear and full statements of 
him whose name is the Truth, which give importance to the 
inquiry. It should ever be remembered that the authority 
of the Scriptures over the conscience of the Christian 
does not depend on their reaching us in a form absolutely 

free from the least trace of error, or on our ability to 

25 

» 


290 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


decide the exact point in tlie.course of transmission, where 
any slight error, if proved to exist, has found entrance. It 
depends on the fact that these are the words of prophets, 
and apostles, and evangelists, messengers whose commission 
has been ratified by the voice of Christ himself, or by signs 
and wonders, and supernatural gifts of the Spirit of God. 
This authority attaches directly to their whole contents, and 
must belong to every part, till we have some direct and 
positive reason to except it from the rest; whether because 
it can be shown to deviate from the original text, or be¬ 
cause it involves some form of provable inaccuracy and 
contradiction. This negative evidence, also, can only serve 
to prune off the particular text, or passage, where such a 
contradiction is found; unless the cases were so numerous, 
and so inwrought into the texture of the work, as to make 
it unreasonable to refer them to a corruption of the copies, 
or to some momentary negligence, at the first, in recording 
a perfect Divine message. 

It would require a volume to enter in detail into the 
various cases in which a charge of inconsistency has been 
brought against the Bible histories. I will confine myself 
to a brief notice of those which have been alleged by two 
very different authorities, and different schools of thought; 
first, in the Seventh Essay, which seems almost entirely to 
set aside all the authority of the Bible as the Word of 
God, and a fountain of certain truth; and, secondly, in 
Dean Alford’s able work on the New Testament, where a 
lax and lowered view of inspiration is joined with a firm 
and full maintenance of all the great outlines and doctrines 
of the Christian faith. 

I. The following are the chief grounds alleged in the 
Seventh Essay, for refusing to the Evangelists the character 
of “ perfect accuracy or agreement.” 

1. First, one supposes the original dwelling-place of our 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 291 


Loi^s parents to have been Bethlehem, another Nazareth. 
Matt, ii, 1, 22; Luke ii, 4. .-Eleven or twelve pages in 
Strauss’s “Leben Jesu,” are occupied with a laborious 
development of this objection. 

This difficulty arises solely from a neglect of the fifth 
previous remark. St. Matthew says nothing about Bethle¬ 
hem as the “original dwelling-place” of Joseph and Mary, 
but introduces it simply as the place where Jesus was born. 
Nay, on looking closely, we have a clear sign that he did 
not regard it as the original dwelling-place. Why else 
should the mention of it be delayed till the visit of the 
magi, and not given at once on the first mention of Joseph 
and his vision? Why not have said, “When his mother 
Mary was espoused to Joseph at Bethlehem,” if Bethlehem, 
in the first passage as well as the second, were supposed to 
be the true scene of the occurrence? The argument from 
Matt, ii, 22, is equally destitute of real force. For the 
natural conclusion that Joseph and Mary would draw from 
the signal wonders at Bethlehem, and from their own views 
of the expected Messiah, would make them infer that 
Judea, and the city of David, were the proper place for 
the education of the infant Jesus. This is confirmed by 
John vii, 42, which shows the popular impression to have 
been precisely what Matt, ii, 22, implies in the mind of 
Joseph, that Bethlehem was not only to be the birthplace 
of Messiah, but also the scene of his life before his public 
work began. 

2. “They trace his genealogy in two different ways.” 
This is the old difficulty, which has been so often answered. 
When we remember that our Lord’s birth was supernatural; 
that he had a real mother and a reputed father; that the 
genealogy by his reputed father, which would naturally be 
assigned to him, though his in a legal and improper sense, 
was not that by which he really took on him our nature, 


292 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


but tbat he was “man of the substance of his mother, Vf and 
ofjier alone; the presence of two distinct genealogies, one 
improperly his, but properly of Joseph, and the other im¬ 
properly Joseph’s, but his in strictest propriety, instead of a 
real difficulty, is in direct harmony with the great doctrine 
of the incarnation. 

3. “One mentions the thieves’ blasphemy; the other has 
preserved the record of the penitent thief.” 

Two steps are here wanting, to form a real contradiction. 
First, if St. Matthew had distinctly affirmed that each of the 
two malefactors had blasphemed our Lord, this could not 
prove an after-repentance on the part of one of them to be 
impossible and untrue. We might then have expected 
some allusion to his own more recent offense; but it would 
not be essential for St. Luke to mention every word of his 
penitent confession. In the next place, St. Matthew does' 
not make the statement separately, concerning each of the 
two thieves, any more than each of the passers-by, or each 
of the chief priests, the scribes, and elders. He describes 
the conduct of three classes, using in each case the same 
plural term. In the two former cases, where the individ¬ 
uals are many, no one infers that the general statement be¬ 
longs separately to each individual. Of thousands who 
passed by, there might be only a few who used the words, 
“Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three 
days, save thyself.” The same is probably true of the 
chief priests, scribes, and elders. The rest of the class, 
even by their silence, were involved in a common guilt, and 
included in a common description. The Gase of the two 
thieves may have been, and probably was, exactly similar. 
The malignant conduct of three classes, the multitudes, the 
chief priests and scribes, and the malefactors, are given in 
St. Matthew; and the exceptions of remorse and pity, the 
wailing of the women, the people who beheld and smote 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 293 


their breasts, the confession of the penitent thief, the half- 
hidden under-currents of natural or godly sorrow, are 
recorded by St. Luke. There is thus unity of character in 
each account, and a real consistency between them. 

4. “They appear to differ about the day and hour of the 
crucifixion.” This objection may be answered in the words 
of another essayist, that “if it be merely one of appear¬ 
ances, and not of realities, it can teach us nothing.” An 
objector, who states his difficulty in this manner, can not 
be very sure of his own ground. 

In what sense do they “appear to differ” as to the day? 
No event could be more deeply graven on their memories. 
In none could a mistake of the day be, in itself, more in¬ 
credible. They all refer it to the Friday in the week of 
the Passover. The supposed difference is not in the day 
of the crucifixion, for the weekly cycle is fixed and certain, 
but in the week-date, that year, of the Jewish Passover. 
Even this diversity, I believe, is an “appearance,” and not 
a reality. The misunderstanding of one text in the fourth 
Gospel, is the only reason for supposing that it contradicts 
the consenting evidence of the three others, which all rep¬ 
resent Thursday as the evening of the Paschal Supper, and 
Friday as the holiday, or great festal day. The difficulty 
about the hour is equally an appearance. For a comparison 
of John xviii, 28; xix, 14, with the few incidents between 
them, seems decisive in favor of Townson’s view, that the 
hours in St. John date from midnight, like our own; and 
on this supposition all the statements agree fully with each 
other. 

5. “The narrative of the woman who anointed the Lord 
is told in all four, but each has more or less considerable 
variations.” It is here assumed that the event, in all the 
four Gospels, is the same. But the account in St. Luke 
differs in every particular, excepting the anointing only. 


294 


THE BIBLE AND MODEBN THOUGHT. 


It-was in a city of Galilee, while the other was in Judea, 
in the village of Bethany. It was before that circuit of 
Galilee, at the close of which our Lord began to speak in 
parables; and the other was a few days before the crucifix¬ 
ion. The woman, in one case, was a notorious sinner; in 
the other, the sister of the mistress who entertained our 
Lord, and of one of the guests who sat by his side. The 
motive, in one case, was gratitude for special sins forgiven; 
and in the other, for loving intimacy, and a brother raised 
from the dead. The objector, the objection, the reply, the 
promise, are all epHrely distinct, *and even plainly incom¬ 
patible. Even the parting words alone, “go in peace,” 
which prove the woman to have been a stranger in the 
party, and could never have been applied to Mary in her 
sister’s house, with Lazarus at the table, are enough to 
prove that the two events are wholly different. When the 
blunder of confounding them has been rectified, the three 
accounts of the later anointing at Bethany have no contra¬ 
diction whatever. There is only some uncertainty, whether 
St. John has placed it a little earlier, or the two others a 
little later, than its exact time. The latter opinion seems 
rather more probable, since it forms a parenthesis in both 
Gospels; but either view implies no real contradiction. 

These are selected examples of inaccuracy in the Gos¬ 
pels; and there is not one of them, when fairly examined, 
which justifies the least charge of real contradiction. But 
we are instructed to make a catalogue “with the view of 
estimating their cumulative weight; since it is obvious that 
the answer, which might be admitted in the case of a .sin¬ 
gle discrepancy, will not be the true answer, if there are 
many.” Here there is a neglect of the principle in the 
third of the previous remarks. Discrepancies, in the wider 
sense of the word, are not contradictions. On the contrary, 
a real diversity to the full extent that truth will allow, is 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 295 

one essential feature of the Gospel narratives. It is the 
way by which they could fulfill the main purpose for which 
the history was given in this form, so as to satisfy the legal 
requirement—“In the mouth'of two or three witnesses shall 
every word be established.” For automata, however high 
the influence that directs their movements, are not, and can 
not be, witnesses. This supposes an intelligent person, who 
uses his own senses, consults his own memory, and describes 
or narrates occurrences which he has seen, or which have 
been told him by others, from a point of sight peculiarly 
his own. We-have just seen six or seven discrepancies, in¬ 
volving no single case of contradiction. Multiply such 
cases a hundredfold, and the truth of the Scriptures will 
remain unimpaired by their “cumulative evidence.” 

II. The same general hypothesis, of partial inaccuracy 
and contradiction in the Gospels, has obtained of late a 
wider currency through Dean Alford’s valuable work, in 
connection with a reverent and Christian tone of thought, 
and critical labors worthy of high esteem. The high repu¬ 
tation of the author, and the extensive use of the work 
among theological students, appear to justify a few remarks 
in this place. If the view be supported by strong evidence, 
there would be a sinful want of candor in refusing to accept 
it through any fear of consequences, since truth alone is 
safe, and error of all kinds is dangerous. But if the rea¬ 
soning is misty and obscure, and the view a groundless 
concession, without evidence, to superficial criticism, it must 
be like a dead fly in precious ointment; and some caution 
against its acceptance, even on such authority, belongs 
clearly to the object of the present work. 

1. The real discrepancies, according to this able writer, 
“ are very few, and nearly all of one kind. They are sim¬ 
ply the results of the entire independence of the accounts. 
They consist merely in different chronological arrangements.” 


296 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Such are the transpositions of the passage to the Gadarenes, 
Matt, viii, 28; Mark v, 1; Luke viii, 26; and the difference 
of position of the incidents in Matt, viii, 19-22; Luke ix, 
57-61. The way of dealing with such discrepancies has 
been twofold. Enemies of the faith have recognized them, 
and pushed them to the utmost, often attempting to create 
them where they do not exist. Equally unworthy of the 
Evangelists has been the course of those who are called the 
orthodox harmonists. « They have usually taken upon them 
to state that such narratives do not refer to the same inci¬ 
dents, and so to save, as they imagine, the .credit of the 
Evangelists, at the expense of common fairness and candor. 
“The fair Christian critic, with no desire to create discrep¬ 
ancies, will candidly recognize them where they unquestion¬ 
ably exist. ... If the arrangement itself were matter of 
Divine inspiration, then we have no right to vary it in the 
slightest degree.” (Prol., pp. 12, 13, 19.) 

There is here, L think, no little confusion of thought. 
First, accounts written under the common guidance and 
especial control of the Spirit of God, can not possibly be 
“entirely independent.” Such a description, rigorously 
taken, excludes inspiration altogether. It makes them of 
self-interpretation, because they have come solely by the 
will of man; and would set aside their higher character, 
as parts in one harmonious and Divine scheme of revela¬ 
tion, in which “holy men of God spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost.” 

Next, differences of arrangement involve contradiction 
and error, only in cases where every event i§ fixed by clear 
notes of time, or where the writer has professed his pur¬ 
pose to adhere throughout to the exact chronological 
succession. But this does not apply to the case of the 
Gospels. St. Luke is the only one who expressly states his 
purpose to write or “in order,” and we have clear 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 297 

proof that in the whole hook of Acts, and at least one- 
half of the Gospel, the design has been fulfilled. The 
inversions that have probable evidence belong mainly to 
St. Matthew, and except perhaps in one or two instances, 
wherever there is likelihood of such an inversion, there is 
no direct note of the true sequence in time. Thus in Matt, 
ix, 2, the words, “And behold,” may very well introduce a 
new incident, though its true date, as we learn from the 
two other Gospels, was before the return from Gadara. 

The idea that inspiration would forbid a historian to 
arrange his materials, except by mere sequence, like the 
writer of an almanac or annual register, has no show of 
reason or common-sense in its favor. Events have other 
laws of connection than simple sequence, and narratives, 
whether inspired or uninspired, have other objects to fulfill 
than those of a table of chronology. In the first Gospel 
there seems a plain reason for a partial departure from the 
strict order of time, in order to bring together, early in its 
course, two or three cardinal discourses of our Lord, the 
Sermon on the Mount, and the commission of the apostles. 
No one has a right to alter the arrangement of the Gospels 
as inspired narratives; but no one has a right to assume, 
invariably, that the order of mention was conceived by the 
writer to be the order of time, and then to impute false¬ 
hood and error to the words of inspiration, because of an 
assumption destitute of all reason. 

. The censure which has been freely thrown, here and 
elsewhere, on the orthodox harmonists, is due mainly to 
some mistiness and confusion of thought. If these harmo¬ 
nists advanced their own conclusions as absolutely certain, 
and not merely as the most probable view at which they 
were able to arrive of the true succession of the events, 
they would be worthy of real blame. But this the best and 
wisest of them have not done. On the other hand, it is no 


298 


THE BIBLE AND. MODERN THOUGHT. 


slight inconsistency, into which some critics who censure 
them have fallen, to maintain that distinct narratives are 
not really inconsistent, and still to decry, one by one, every 
possible alternative of their harmony, as strained, improb¬ 
able, and incredible. This clamor against harmonies is, in 
reality, a slight infusion of the mythical theory, which has 
tainted unconsciously the views of some critics, otherwise 
orthodox and sound. If our Lord’s life be a reality and not 
a fiction, then all the events in the four Gospels must have 
had a real sequence in time. The four narratives, if they 
furnish materials, on the one hand, for a full conception of 
our Lord’s spiritual character, furnish them, also, for a 
definite biographical outline in the true order of succession. 
It may not be easy to attain the full ideal conception, or 
the precise historical reality, but we may approach to each 
of them. The limit, on either side, is a perfect doctrinal 
christology, and a perfect chronological harmony. But 
if we aim at one, and proscribe and defame all attempts to 
reach the other, then we sacrifice the historical reality of 
our Lord’s life to the spiritual idea, and are taking the 
first step toward the Straussian or mythical pole of infidel 
delusion. 

2. “ It is more consistent with the fair interpretation 
of the text, to suppose that Matthew himself was not aware 
of the events, Luke i, ii, and wrote under the impression 
that Bethlehem was the original dwelling-place; certainly, 
had we only his Gospel, his inference would be universally 
made.” 

Now, since it is owned that his narrative contains 
“nothing inconsistent” with St. Luke, this supposition im¬ 
plies no contradiction. It would rather prove a special 
control of the Spirit of God, whereby the writers, though 
in partial ignorance, were still kept from all real incon¬ 
sistency. But the inference has really no warrant but a 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 299 

superficial view of the history. Once let us realize the 
natural effect of the special revelations on the minds of 
Joseph and Mary, and compare them with the popular view 
of Micah’s prophecy, as including the education of Messiah, 
no less than his birth—John vii, 46—and the need of a 
fresh message to induce a removal to Galilee will appear 
perfectly natural. In fact, the opposite view really implies 
that St. Matthew invented the incident recorded in ii, 22. 
For if the fact of Joseph’s original residence at Nazareth 
is consistent with his need of such a message from God, 
then the Evangelist’s knowledge of the fact must be equally 
consistent with his statement, that such a message was 
given. 

3. “As the two accounts now stand, it is wholly impos¬ 
sible to suggest any satisfactory method of uniting them: 
whoever has attempted it has violated probability and com¬ 
mon-sense. On the other hand, it is impossible to say that 
they could not be reconciled by a thorough knowledge of 
the facts themselves. If St. Luke had seen St. Matthew’s 
Gospel, or vice versa , the variations are utterly inexplicable; 
and the greatest absurdities are involved in the writings 
of those who assume this, and then proceed to harmo¬ 
nize. Of the presentation, etc., Matthew’s account knows 
nothing; of the visit of the magi, the murder of the inno¬ 
cents, and the flight to Egypt, Luke is unaware.” 

These remarks are more difficult by far to reconcile with 
each other, and with the inspiration of both Gospels, than 
the two accounts themselves. First, if it were impossible for 
St. Luke to have written as he has done, if he had seen 
St. Matthew’s account, how is it possible for the Holy 
Spirit, by whom his writing was controlled, and who cer¬ 
tainly must have known the precise nature of the other 
record, to have allowed him to dispose it in such a form, or 
to make such omissions? Why should the very same fact, 


300 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

the existence of St. Matthew’s account, be a decisive reason, 
with the Holy Spirit, for directing the second narrative of 
the infancy into this particular form, and a decisive reason 
to the Evangelist, if it were known, rendering that form 
impossible? Is it essential to the character of a sacred 
historian, that his views on the choice and right disposition 
of his materials should be directly the reverse of those 
which the facts themselves require us to ascribe to the Spirit 
of Hod? 

Next, it is a plain contradiction to suppose that every 
attempted union of the two accounts is a violation of com¬ 
mon-sense and probability, and still to imagine that they 
may be reconciled by facts now unknown. The flight to 
Egypt, if a real fact, must have occurred after the Present¬ 
ation, since the interval before it is plainly too short for the 
journey. It must either, then, come before the return to 
Nazareth in Luke ii, 39, or there must have been a later 
return to Bethlehem, and a later return to Nazareth again. 
The first is the simple and natural view, adopted by most 
harmonists—the latter a possible, but much less probable 
alternative. To style them both violations of common-sense, 
and still to hold that the two accounts are true and recon¬ 
cilable, if other facts were known, is to overlook and con¬ 
tradict the very nature of the problem. The converse rea¬ 
soning is clearly irresistible. If both accounts are true, the 
flight to Egypt must have occurred, either before the Pre¬ 
sentation, or after it, and before the return to Nazareth in 
St. Luke, or else after that return. But the first is impos¬ 
sible from the limits of time, and the third is improbable. 
Therefore the second must be highly probable; and either 
the second or third, instead of violating probability, must 
be certainly true. 

4. “The reconciliation of the two genealogies has never 
been accomplished; and every attempt to do it has violated 


4 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 301 

s 

either ingenuousness or common-sense. The two genealo¬ 
gies are both the line of Joseph, and not of Mary.” 

Now, since almost every conceivable variety has been 
proposed, if both genealogies are inspired, some one of 
'these solutions must not only be possible, but the very 
truth, designed by the Holy Spirit when both were given. 
The above remark is thus harder to reconcile with com¬ 
mon-sense than the harmonies it condemns. It is even in 
direct contradiction with the remark which follows it. For 
if both the genealogies are Joseph’s, since he could not 
have two real fathers, either the main principle of Grotius, 
that Heli was his natural and Jacob his legal father, or 
the opposite view, that Jacob was the real, and Heli his 
legal father, must plainly be true. But if one of two al¬ 
ternatives is clearly true, they can not, both of them, be 
violations of common-sense- and probability. In fact, the 
usual view, that St. Luke has given the true genealogy, and 
that Heli was the father-in-law of Joseph, may be estab¬ 
lished alike by external and internal evidence; and the re¬ 
lapse from it into a different solution has created artificial 
difficulties, where simple-minded believers find only a deep 
harmony of Divine wisdom. 

5. “ A comparison of Luke iv, 16-24, with Matthew xiii, 
53-58, Mark vi, 1-6, entered on without bias, can scarcely 
fail to convince us of their identity. That he should have 
been thus treated at his first visit, and then marveled at 
their unbelief on his second, is utterly impossible. That 
the same question should have been twice asked, and an¬ 
swered with the same proverb, is highly improbable. The 
words 1 whatever we have heard,’ must refer to more than 
one miracle. Here the order of St. Luke begins to be 
confused.” 

Now, since St. Luke openly professes his purpose to 
write “in order,” and with perfect knowledge of all things 


802 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


from the very first, the view in this extract does imply a 
real inaccuracy and contradiction in the G-ospels. For the 
visit to Nazareth in St. Matthew and St. Mark is plainly 
made to follow the parables, and the raising of the ruler’s 
daughter, and comes shortly before the mission of the 
Twelve. Hence, if St. Luke speaks of the same visit, the 
very first event he names in our Lord’s ministry is wholly 
out of its true order, is transferred from the later half of 
the period to its first beginning, and even fastened to a 
wrong place by the words at the close. For St. Luke 
plainly describes the course of teaching at Capernaum, and 
the cure of the demoniac, as results which followed our 
Lord’s escape from the Nazarenes. 

When we read the accounts, however, without bias, it 
seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that two different 
visits are described. The first, in St. Luke, instead of an¬ 
swering to Matt, xiii, 53-58, answers plainly to the brief 
notice in Matt, iv, 13—“ And leaving Nazareth, he came and 
dwelt in Capernaum.” A visit to his own city, at the 
opening of his ministry, is there evidently implied; and St. 
Luke simply gives us the full particulars of that conduct, 
which led our Savior to leave Nazareth, and choose another 
center for his Galilean ministry. The passage chosen, and 
the brief comment, evidently suit the public opening of his 
message in Galilee, and lose most of their force, if they are 
placed eighteen months or two years later. The words 
“as his custom was,’\ agree with the same view. For he 
must have been accustomed, up to the opening of his min¬ 
istry, to have frequented this very synagogue on each Sab¬ 
bath day, which custom was now broken off by the conduct 
of the Nazarenes. But if referred to a later time, all the 
special force of the words is lost, and they would apply 
less to this synagogue thati to almost any other. In the 
visit in St. Mark he wrought some miracles, even in Naza- 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 303 


reth, on. a few sick folks, but the account in St. Luke 
makes such a result of that visit clearly impossible. In 
fact the whole tone of the two narratives, their beginning, 
middle, and close, are quite different. 

Two reasons alone are urged for confounding the visits 
in one. First, that our Lord could not possibly have mar¬ 
veled at their unbelief, if they had rejected him with vio¬ 
lence already. But even viewing the facts in a purely 
human light, there is no force in this objection. Unde¬ 
served violence, and open wrong done to those whom it was 
a duty to honor, often produce a strong reaction. By com¬ 
paring Mark iii, 31-35, it is probable that the second visit 
was at the request of some of the Nazarenes, who had be¬ 
come ashamed of their violence, when the miracles and 
fame of Jesus were past dispute. In this case their sullen 
persistence in unbelief would be more surprising, even to a 
human view, because the force of his miracles had made 
them ashamed of their brutal violence. But the. true force 
of the words lies still deeper. They do not mean that our 
Lord was takep by surprise; but simply teach how strange 
a madness unbelief, in its more aggravated forms, must be 
reckoned in the eyes of One who is perfectly holy. 

The other reason, from the repeated use of the same 
proverb, becomes a strong proof, On a closer view, of the 
distinctness of the visits, and not of their sameness. For 
when our Lord’s ministry was hardly begun, and his name 
scarcely known in Galilee, he quotes it in the negative 
form: “No prophet is accepted in his own country.” But 
when, after eighteen months of preaching, with constant 
miracles of Divine power, his fame was widely spread, and 
all Galilee looked up to him as a “great prophet,” in whom 
“ God had visited his people,” the proverb is quoted in an 
opposite way, and exhibits the Nazarenes as the solitary 
exception in the midst of the general acknowledgment of 


304 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

his claims. “A prophet is not without honor, save in his 
own country, and kindred, and father’s house.” Thus every 
circumstance really conspires to prove the visits distinct, 
and the alleged inaccuracy of the Gospels resolves itself 
into a new example of perfect consistency and truth. We 
have merely an instance where the wise rule has been neg¬ 
lected, which the learned writer himself has laid down, 
“ that similar incidents must not he too hastily assumed to 
be the same.” (Prol., p. 13.) 

6. “In the last apology of St. Stephen, which he spake 
being full of the Holy Ghost, we have at least two demon¬ 
strable historical inaccuracies.” (Prol., p. 19.) 

The first of these is thus explained, in Acts vii, 4: “The 
Jewish chronology, which Stephen follows, was at fault 
here, owing to the circumstance of Terah’s death being 
mentioned—Gen. xi, 32—before the command to Abraham 
to leave Ilaran, it not having been observed that the men¬ 
tion is anticipatory.” The real error, however, is that of 
the critic alone, who entirely overlooks the true explana¬ 
tion, adopted by Usher, Clinton, and rno^t of the best 
chronologers, and which is confirmed by Gen. xi, 29, and 
the age of Sarah; that Abraham was not the oldest, but 
the youngest son of Terah. For Sarah, we are clearly 
taught, was the sister of Milcah and daughter of Ilaran, 
and was only ten years younger than Abraham. Gen. xi, 
29; xvii, 17. The words of St. Stephen, then, instead of 
contradicting Genesis, fix its meaning, and establish the 
harmony of its separate statements; and the opposite view, 
while it charges him with error, is itself “a demonstrable 
historical inaccuracy.” 

The second asserted error is in Acts vii, 15, 16: “So 
Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers, 
and were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepul¬ 
cher that Abraham bought for a sum of money, of the sons 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 305 

of Emmor, the father of Syehem.” Here there is, no 
doubt, an apparent confusion of two purchases and two 
burials. Abraham bought a burial-place at Hebron, from 
Ephron, in which Jacob and Leah were buried. Jacob, 
again, bought a piece of ground at Syehem from the sons 
of Hamor the father of Shechem, where the bones of Joseph 
were buried. We have no account of the burial-place of 
the other patriarchs. 

Now, here it is important to remember when, and where, 
and before whom the words were spoken. It was at Jeru¬ 
salem, where the study of the law was at its hight, before 
the hostile Sanhedrim, and the high-priest, and all the 
scribes, men accustomed to count the very letters of the 
law of Moses, that Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, was 
making his formal defense against a charge of contempt of 
the law, after a controversy upon that law in the syna¬ 
gogues for many days, in which no adversaries “ were able 
to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spake.” 
Is it consistent with reason or common-sense, to impute to 
such a man, at such a time, and in the presence of such 
judges and adversaries, the double mistake of supposing 
that Jacob was buried in Syehem, in contradiction to the 
full narrative in the close of Genesis; and that Abraham 
lived in the time of Shechem, though his death and burial 
in Hebron are recorded in Gen. xxv, before mention of 
Jacob’s birth; and the purchase of the ground in Shechem 
is stated in Gen. xxxiii, shortly before the death of Isaac, 
and eighty years after Abraham’s death ? Is it rational to 
expound this verse, so as to make Stephen, a learned Jew, 
full of the Holy Spirit, more ignorant of the sacred his¬ 
tory, of which he is giving a rapid outline, than a well- 
informed Sunday school child in these days? 

On the other hand, the explanation of Flacius and 
Bengel is simple and complete. St. Stephen, as being 

26 


306 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


thoroughly familiar with the details of the two histories, 
and speaking to the Sanhedrim, who were equally familiar 
with them, compresses the two into one by a series of 
mental ellipses, which his audience would at once supply 
for themselves. The two incidents are referred to by a 
regular alternation. Jacob is named, and not Joseph, of 
those who were buried; Syehem, and not Hebron, of the 
two burial-places; Abraham, and not Jacob, of the two 
purchasers; and the sons of Emmor, the father of Syehem, 
and not Ephron the Hittite, of the two parties from whom 
the purchase was made. There is here too much method 
in the seeming inaccuracy, to leave any reasonable doubt 
of its real source. Bengel has remarked, with his usual 
judgment: “ In writing, omissions of this kind are usually 
marked by the pen; but they may be admitted in dis¬ 
course, when, in a matter fully known, and present equally 
to the mind of the speaker and the hearers, merely what is 
enough is spoken, and the other words, which would hinder 
the flow of the discourse, are to be reckoned as if they 
were spoken also.” 

It would occupy too much space to enter here upon other 
alleged discrepancies, and especially those two main sub¬ 
jects, the last Passover, and the order of events on the 
resurrection-day. I believe that they both admit of an 
adequate solution, which changes them from stumbling- 
blocks to the faith into powerful confirmations of the Gos¬ 
pel narrative. 

To conclude, the presence of a few slight inaccuracies in 
the Gospels, or in other histories of Scripture, would be no 
decisive argument for a lowered theory of their inspiration, 
consistent with the entrance of human error; unless these 
were clearly inwrought into the texture of the narrative, 
and were more than solitary specks on the surface, easily 
accounted for by defective transmission, and as easily 


ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 307 

removed. But while there is ample proof in the Gospels of 
the diversity of the testimonies, and the independent 
authority of the four witnesses, the attempt to establish a 
contradiction, whether by Christian critics, or skeptical ad¬ 
versaries of the faith, when submitted to a close examina¬ 
tion, invariably fails. Its usual result will be to bring to 
light some undesigned coincidence, some delicate harmony 
of truth, which escapes the careless reader, and only reveals 
itself to a patient, humble, and reverent study of these or¬ 
acles of God. 


« 


308 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

The discoveries of modern science have often been sup¬ 
posed to form a strong disproof of the inspiration and 
Divine authority of the Scriptures. Much has been written 
on both sides in this important controversy. The lines of 
argument have also been various, alike in the defenders 
and assailants, till the whole subject is involved, to many 
minds, in no slight perplexity and confusion. The chief 
topics in the controversy are the Bible Astronomy, the 
History of Creation, the History of the Flood, and the 
Unity and Antiquity of Mankind. In all these the main 
question to be answered is of this nature: Does the Bible, 
in its allusions to scientific truth, agree with the doctrine 
that its messages are the words of Grod, or betray itself to 
be the production of fallible Jewish writers, tinged through¬ 
out with undeniable and manifest error? 

The contrast, arising from these opposite views of the 
Bible, may easily be exaggerated in their probable effect on 
its scientific allusion^. Uninspired writers, who are content 
to adhere modestly to the teaching of the senses, and do 
mot pretend to make discoveries, or to speculate on secret 
causes, may escape, almost entirely, the fault of the pro¬ 
pounding scientific error. On the other hand, the great 
end of Divine revelation is not the diffusion of natural 
knowledge, but the moral renovation of mankind. Facts 
of a scientific character are plainly collateral, and not the 
main object of the work. Such messages would diverge 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


309 


from their true purpose, if they anticipated the discoveries 
of a science in some distant age. A summary of modern 
astronomy, chemistry, or electricity, we feel instinctively, 
would be quite out of place, in such an early revelation of 
the will of God to men. It would, in fact, be a supernat¬ 
ural prophecy of a very peculiar kind, less instructive to 
mankind in general than those which have actually been 
given, and far more useless and perplexing to the readers 
of every intermediate age. 

A just view of the subject will, therefore, produce great 
caution in our acceptance, either of objections to Scripture, 
or supposed confirmations of its truth, drawn from the 
scientific or physical allusions scattered through its pages. 
If its purpose were scientific, we might expect to find in it 
wonderful scientific discoveries, assuming that it is a true 
revelation from God. On the other hand, if its writers 
were not only uninspired, but rash, presumptuous impostors, 
who sought the credit of knowledge beyond their fellows, 
then scientific errors would be almost sure to abound. But 
the contrast, in this one feature, between good and fallible 
men, who write with modesty and reverence, and true reve¬ 
lations in which the Almighty suits his message to the 
actual wants and state of mankind, would be far less strik¬ 
ing and conspicuous than many seem to assume. It is only 
on a few points that we may expect some intimation to be 
given, that the God of the Bible is also the Lord of nature, 
“ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl¬ 
edge.” 

There is, however, one point of view, in which the neg¬ 
ative presumption for the inspiration of the Scriptures has, 
even at first sight, no little force. For they do evidently 
claim to be a revelation from God. The account of crea¬ 
tion itself, on any other view, is a manifest absurdity. If 
this claim be groundless, the writers can not be classed 


810 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


among modest and cautious men. Presumption in that 
which is the greatest must lead us to expect presumption 
in that which ranks far lower in importance. He who in¬ 
vents messages from the Creator, is not likely to be 
scrupulous in his claims to special acquaintance with the 
works of God. Hence, false revelations, almost invariably, 
involve some flagrant contradiction of true science. Hindu¬ 
ism, at this moment, is melting away under a system of 
secular education, which undermines and destroys the au¬ 
thority of its Shasters and Vedas, because of the false 
geography and physics interwoven with their theology. 
False religion and false science are there so inseparably 
united, that any scheme of instruction, in which the truths 
of science are taught, and the truths of God’s Word are 
withheld, becomes really equivalent, in practice, to a direct 
propagation of irreligion and unbelief. And hence, con¬ 
versely, the mere absence of false science, in a professed 
revelation from heaven, is no slight presumption in favor 
of its truth. The claim of Divine authority, on questions 
relating to man’s moral state and future destiny, is only 
confirmed by the absence of pretended discoveries, with re¬ 
gard to the constitution- and laws of the natural world, 
which have been committed to the slow and laborious deci¬ 
pherment of man’s native intelligence. 

I. The Astronomy of the Bible is the first and earliest 
of those topics, from which scientific assaults on its inspira¬ 
tion have been raised. It had nearly passed, indeed, into 
oblivion, when kindred questions in geology and physiology 
have revived it once more. The revival of science, we have 
been told, displaced the Ptolemaic by the Copernican theory. 
But the Hebrew records, the basis of our faith, manifestly 
countenance the opinion of the earth’s immobility. Galileo 
was compelled, by the Inquisition, to sign the statement, 
that “the proposition that the sun is the center of the 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 311 

world, and immovable, is absurd, philosophically false, and 
formally heretical.” But the brilliant progress of science 
subdued the minds of men. The controversy between faith 
and knowledge slumbered, and the limited views of the 
universe in the Old Testament ceased to be felt as religious 
difficulties. The progress of geology, a new science, has 
forced attention to the subject once more. The prima-facie 
view of the Bible narrative reverses, to a great extent, our 
present astronomical, as well as geological views of the 
universe. 

This astronomical objection, now revived from a long 
sleep, has never had much weight with candid and thought¬ 
ful men. It is true that the Romish inquisitors, who con¬ 
demned Galileo, have lent the whole weight of their scien¬ 
tific and theological eminence to the cause of infidelity, and 
their names naturally stand foremost in the proof that the 
Bible and modern astronomy contradict each other. But the 
authority of Newton himself, which many may be disposed 
to rank higher on such a question, is thrown decisively into 
the opposite scale. The immortal writer of the Principia, 
it is clear from his later works, did not share the perplexity 
which some smatterers in astronomy profess to feel, when 
they observe that the Bible speaks on these subjects in the 
common language of all mankind. When we are told, for 
instance, that “ the sun was risen upon the earth, when Lot 
entered Zoar,” it is not Newton who complains that we do 
not read, in its place, a scientific statement such as this, 
“That Palestine had revolved, when Lot entered the city, 
until its tangent plane coincided once more with the solar 
azimuth.” True science is cautious and modest, and is not 
easily betrayed into such absurdities. 

In reality, the whole objection to the language of Scrip¬ 
ture on this subject, arises from the influence of three 
errors—that scientific statements of the earth’s motion are 


312 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


absolute, and not relative truth; that popular language is 
simply false, and not relatively true; and that the relation 
of matter to matter, in connection with the laws of force 
and motion, is of higher importance than its relation to the 
senses and universal experience of mankind. 

First, the statements of modern science, after all, embody 
relative, and not absolute truth. All motion, and all action, 
so far as science can reveal it, is simply correlative. We 
can not conceive of a fixed position in absolutely empty 
space. Yiewing first our own system as a whole, the planets 
do not, in strictness of speech, revolve around the sun, but 
the sun and the planets move alike around the common 
center of gravity. The doctrine that “the sun is immov¬ 
able from its place’' may not be “formally heretical” as 
the inquisitors affirmed, but there can be no doubt that it 
is “philosophically false.” If popular language, then, were 
replaced by that of the Copernican theory, the result would 
be only, on the principles of the objection, to substitute 
one scientific mistake for another. But it is now ascer¬ 
tained, also, that the whole solar system is in movement 
toward a point not very far from the bright star of Lyra. 
The true nature, therefore, of the earth’s pathway through 
space is not a circle or ellipse in a fixed plane, around the 
sun as its center, but a complex spiral, thirty degrees 
aslant from the vertical, in which the interval of the suc¬ 
cessive rounds is four-fifths of their diameter. And we 
have no assurance that this result is absolute and final. 
For most of the stars from which the motion of the sun is 
deduced belong to the great system of the milky way, and 
it is by no means impossible that these may partake of a 
common motion with regard to other sidereal systems. 
There are thus four or five modes of conception, all equally 
relative, as the observer is on the earth, on the sun, in a 
fixed position with regard to the center of the solar system, 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 313 

a fixed position in the sidereal system, or one still more 
remote and independent. 

Again, it is a great mistake to conceive that the lan¬ 
guage of common life, adopted also in Scripture, is the ex¬ 
pression of simple falsehood, and not of a most important 
variety of scientific truth. Thus we have been told that 
the account in Genesis “ does not describe physical reali¬ 
ties, but only outward appearances; that is, it gives a de¬ 
scription false in fact, and one which can teach us no 
scientific truth whatever.” There is, however, no ground 
at all for this fancied contrast between facts and appear¬ 
ances. Appearances are simply those facts, in relation to 
the senses of men, by which alone we come to the knowl¬ 
edge of other facts not immediately observed, and in some 
cases not observable. Every sunrise and sunset, and every 
meridian transit of a star, is as much an astronomical fact 
as the Newtonian theory, the rotation of the earth, or the 
elliptic shape of its annual orbit. In reality, it is facts of 
this kind which form the whole material of modern as¬ 
tronomy in its most advanced form and scientific language 
is not used to disguise them. Practical astronomers 
have been compelled to introduce a large variety of tech¬ 
nical terms, all framed on precisely the same principles, 
and molded by the same laws of thought, as the phrases 
of Scripture and of common life. Such, for instance, are 
the transits of Venus and Mercury, the occultation of stars 
behind the moon, the contact of the sun and moon in an 
eclipse, the immersion and emersion of Jupiter’s satellites, 
the transit instrument for observing the transit of stars 
across the meridian, their elevation by refraction and de¬ 
pression by parallax, the preceding and following side of 
the heavens, right and oblique ascension, the entrance of 
stars into the field of the telescope, the upper and lower 

culmination of circumpolar stars, when they either pass the 

27 


314 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


zenith,' or graze the horizon. These are a few conspicuous 
examples of a fixed and constant law of scientific language, 
which runs through the whole range of practical and in¬ 
strumental astronomy. The maxim which charges the Bible 
with scientific falsehood because of its astronomical phrases, 
fastens the same charge on the “ Nautical Almanac,” and 
the “ Connaissance des Temps,” and indeed on every record 
whatever of the materials or the results of modern as¬ 
tronomy. 

Still further, the relations of matter to matter, or to an 
observer perched in the ideal center of our solar system, 
are far less important, in a practical sense, than its rela¬ 
tions to the experience and daily observation of mankind. 
Bulk, mass, and lifeless magnitude, are not things of su¬ 
preme importance, especially in a moral message designed 
for The spiritual recovery of a fallen world. The double 
purpose of all revealed truth is to restore man to his 
dominion over nature, and his allegiance to God. When¬ 
ever one is renounced, the other is lost, and the rebel 
against Divine authority becomes the victim of some form 
of conscious or unconscious idolatry. But if the earth be 
held quite subordinate to the sun, simply because of its in¬ 
ferior bulk and weight, then man must be immensely in¬ 
ferior to the ground on which he treads, and the rhinoceros 
and hippopotamus, the oaks and cedars, the volcanoes and 
their streams of lava, must rank far above him in the scale 
of being. Pride tempts man, in the consciousness of men¬ 
tal power, to forget both his moral weakness and physical 
insignificance. Pantheistic fatalism sets aside all moral dis¬ 
tinctions, and degrades him into a mere passive atom in 
the vast machine of the universe. The Bible alone recon¬ 
ciles and harmonizes the contrasted truths of his actual 
condition, his physical insignificance, his moral frailty and 
corruption, and the dignity of a nature framed in the 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 315 

image of God, and made to have dominion over all the 
works of his hands. 

The motions of the heavenly bodies depend on laws of 
force, which relate to quantity of matter and distance 
alone. Men of science have thus to make abstraction of 
their other qualities and relations, however important, to 
place themselves in thought somewhere in empty space, and 
to contemplate their motions, either from that fixed point, 
or with reference to that body which has the greatest mass, 
so that complex relations may be more simply conceived. 
.Yet, even in abstract science, the same motive requires 
them sometimes to forsake these foreign points of view, and 
return to the earth again. In the lunar theory, the earth, 
and not the sun, is the center to which the motions have 
to be referred. The sun is treated as revolving round it, 
only more slowly than the moon and at a greater distance, 
and as deranging the lunar ellipse by this revolution. By 
no other means can the complex inquiry be duly simplified, 
and the lunar perturbations clearly ascertained. How 
much more, when the message relates entirely to the 
present duty and future hopes of mankind, must all the 
outward works of God be viewed in relation to this great 
object, and not with relation to mass and mechanical force 
alone! One soul is far nobler than millions on millions^f 
cubic leagues of empty space; and even if these were filled 
with nebulous mist, or this mist condensed into a vast globe 
of fire, it could never rival the dignity of one rational and 
immortal creature, formed in the image of God, capable of 
knowing its Creator, and enjoying his love forever. 

The Bible, therefore, in describing physical changes with 
direct reference to the constant experience of mankind, or 
terrestrial observers, adopts the only course which agrees 
with the scope and purpose of a moral revelation. For it 
would violate its own character, and one of its own chief 


316 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

doctrines, unless the material works of God were treated as 
subordinate to the life, happiness, and moral welfare of 
mankind. The lesson which it teaches on its first page, is 
the only sure antidote to every form of degrading idola¬ 
try—that man is the lord of nature, because he is the sub¬ 
ject and child of the living God. 

II. The history of Creation, in Genesis, has given rise to 
more serious difficulty, from its alleged contrast with the 
lessons of geology. The discordant nature of the exposi¬ 
tions offered by various Christian writers has been turned 
into an argument that no satisfactory solution can be found. 
The spectacle, we are told, of able and conscientious writers 
employed on this impossible task, is painful and humilia¬ 
ting. They shuffle and stumble over their difficulties in a 
piteous manner, and do not breathe freely, till they return 
to the pure and open fields of science again. 

Now, what is really painful and humiliating is that men, 
who still call themselves Christians, should venture to com¬ 
pare the first of God’s messages, confirmed as Divine by 
Christ and his apostles, to a stifling and mephitic cavern, 
from which we must escape with all speed, and take refuge 
with mammoths, mastodons, and the skeletons of extinct 
monsters, in order to breathe more freely, and avoid the 
risk of suffocation. It may be unwise to affirm that “geo¬ 
logical investigations all prove the perfect harmony be¬ 
tween Scripture and geology in reference to the history of 
Creation.” But the opposite assertion, that they are plainly 
irreconcilable, is still more unreasonable on the side of 
science alone, and adds the guilt of degrading the Word of 
God into the presumptuous guess-work of some Hebrew im¬ 
postor, who dared to propound his own ignorant fancies as 
revelations from the Almighty. 

The statement in Genesis is to this effect: that man-was 
created and placed on the earth, in Asia, in the Garden of 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


317 


Eden, six or seven thousand years ago; that his creation 
took place on the last of six successive days, during which 
the earth was changed from a dark, waste, and unformed 
condition, to a well-furnished habitation, by signal acts of 
creative energy; and that a seventh day followed, or a 
Sabbath of rest, which God appointed for a lasting ordi¬ 
nance, because on this first seventh day he rested from all 
his work which he created and made. 

Now, geolpgical science discloses a long series of changes, 
through which our earth had passed before any traces are 
found of man’s presence, and a distinct fauna and flora in 
each of these eras, amounting to many thousand extinct 
species. The question is, how these two statements are to 
be reconciled, or whether they are wholly incompatible. 
Some writers, as Hugh Miller, MacCausland, and Mac¬ 
donald, expound the days of Genesis to be long periods, in 
the order of which they trace some resemblance to the 
main outlines of geological discovery. A few others, as 
Dr. Pye Smith, restrict the whole narrative to local and 
limited changes in Central Asia alone; which must strike 
every one at once, as falling very short of the natural 
scope and force of the description. But many writers of 
eminence, as Chalmers, Buckland, Sedgwick, Dr. Kurtz, and 
Archdeacon Pratt, in his able pamphlet on Scripture and 
Science, hold that the days of Genesis are literal days, that 
the ages of geology are passed over silently in the second 
verse; and that the passage describes a great work of God, 
at the close of the Tertiary Period, by which our planet, 
after long ages, was finally prepared to be the habitation 
of man. This, I have no doubt, is the true and simple ex¬ 
planation. I shall now endeavor to show that the objec¬ 
tions brought against it in the Fifth Essay are entirely 
worthless, and that it is the assailant, and not the eminent 
writers assailed, who exhibits a strange confusion of thought, 


318 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


along with a lamentable determination to disparage the 
truth of Scripture, and set aside its Divine authority. 

1. The first and main question relates to the mode of 
representation employed in the sacred narrative. The 
Christian interpreters, who hold the day-periods or the 
literal days, agree in the view that the events are optically 
described, that is, as they would appear to a spectator 
placed on the surface of the earth. This is a principle 
common to their two expositions, which afterward diverge 
from each other. And this, accordingly, is the first object 
of assault in the recent Essay. The objection runs as 
follows: 

“ Both these theories divest the Mosaic narrative of real 
accordance with fact; both assume that appearances only, 
not facts, are described; and that in riddles, which would 
never have been suspected to be such, had we not arrived 
at the truth from other sources. It would be difficult for 
controversialists to cede more completely the point in dis¬ 
pute, or to admit more explicitly that the Mosaic narrative 
does not represent correctly the history of the universe up 
to the time of man. At the same time the upholders of 
each theory see insuperable objections in detail to that of 
their allies, and do not pretend to any firm faith in their 
own. How can it be otherwise, when the task proposed is 
to evade the plain meaning of language, and to introduce 
obscurity into one of the simplest stories ever told, for the 
sake of making it accord with the complex system of the 
universe which modern science has unfolded?” 

This whole objection, urged in so contemptuous a tone, 
rests plainly on that gross and fundamental error which 
has been already exposed. Appearances and facts are no 
real antithesis. Appearances are themselves facts. They 
are precisely the facts, on which all science depends, as the 
materials from which it is derived, and to which it must 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


319 


return, in order to confirm its discoveries, or yield any 
practical benefit to mankind. What is an eclipse but an 
appearance? And yet what is the proof, above all others, 
by which modern astronomy has established its claim to be 
a real science, but the marvelous accuracy with which 
eclipses are foretold, even in their minutest details ? Scien¬ 
tific speculation is like the balloon, which carries the ob¬ 
server into the upper sky, and enlarges the sphere of his 
vision. Phenomena are like the ground, from which it 
must ascend, and to which, after a short journey, it must 
soon return; though with a knowledge enlarged beyond 
the limits of its first horizon, or perhaps alighting in a 
country never visited before. 

The Mosaic narrative, then, if it be a faithful record of 
appearances, is also a record of facts, and stands on a level, 
in scientific truthfulness, with the daily register of any 
modern observatory. For these consist entirely of appear¬ 
ances, whether of.stars in the field of a telescope, or of the 
mercury in a barometer or a thermometer, or of the index 
in the anemometer or galvanometer, or of the clouds in the 
sky, only noted down with mathematical precision. They 
are appearances from first to last. The flippant censure, 
aimed against the first chapter of. the Bible, would sweep 
away in a moment the records of all our scientific observ¬ 
atories as equally false and faithless, and with them would 
destroy all the materials on which science itself depends. 

The second falsehood in this objection is the assertion 
that the optical view of the Mosaic narrative turns a simple 
story into a riddle, the true meaning of which could never 
be suspected unless we gained it from other sources. This, 
it will be plain on a little reflection, exactly reverses the 
real truth. Any other view of the passage would turn it 
into a riddle to the readers of all early ages of mankind; 
and even to the great majority in our own days, who have 


320 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


not abused tbe discoveries of science so as to falsify the 
daily and hourly experiences of human life. 

There are four plain reasons why the narrative in the 
first of Genesis should be optically given, or describe 
changes as they would appear to a terrestrial observer. 
First, it is the constant and habitual language of daily life. 
Secondly, it is the equally-invariable style of all our scien¬ 
tific observations. Thirdly, it is the constant usage of all 
historians, without exception, ancient and modern. Fourthly 
and lastly, it is the idiom of the Bible itself, in every other 
part of the sacred narrative. The claim of modern sciolists, 
that this chapter alone should be put in masquerade, and 
describe changes as they would appear from Sirius, or the 
center of gravity of the sun and the planets, is just as rea¬ 
sonable as to require that it should have been written in 
some language used by angels, instead of being given, like 
all the rest of the Bible, in the language of men. The 
passage just quoted is more than a simple error. It is a 
direct and total inversion of the real truth. If it were 
wished to turn the first page of Scripture into a riddle, un¬ 
intelligible to all former ages, and hardly to be understood, 
except by one person in a thousand, even in our own days, 
we might frame it according to the recipe of these Assailants 
of its truth. It would then run pretty nearly as follows : 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
And first, God said, Let there be immense oceans of nebu¬ 
lous matter, scattered throughout all space; and it was so. 
And God said, Let the nebulous matter condense slowly, 
under the law of universal gravitation ; and it was so. And 
God said, Let the central portion of each heap of mist con¬ 
dense into a sun, and the smaller portions condense into 
planets, and let the planets revolve each around its own sun; 
and it was so. And God said, Let one planet of one sun 
condense into solid matter, and become liquid with intense 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


321 


heat; and it was so. And God called the planet earth, and 
the central body it revolved around he called the sun; and 
it was so. And God said, Let the earth, after long ages, 
cool down, till solid strata can be formed upon its surface; 
and it was so. And God said, Let plants and living crea¬ 
tures grow upon the earth, and be destroyed again; and it 
was so. And the period of their birth and destruction was 
a second day. And God said, Let ferns and other plants 
grow in great abundance, and then be buried, and reduced 
to coal in the crust of the earth; and it was so. And the 
period of these plants was a third day. And God said, Let 
oolite and sandstone strata be formed, and other races of 
plants and animals be buried in them; and it was so. And 
the period of these strata and the animals entombed in them 
was the fourth day. And God said, Let mighty lizards be 
created, and then destroyed and buried; and it was so: and 
the lizard period was a fifth day, etc.” Such an account of 
creation, whatever might be its measure of scientific accu¬ 
racy, would have been an unmeaning riddle to all past gen- 
* erations of mankind. We should have a meager summary 
of physical changes, wholly unintelligible to common read¬ 
ers, instead of the simplicity, beauty, and grandeur of a 
Divine message. 

It is urged, however, that if the description be one of ap¬ 
pearances, it can teach us no truth whatever. If this remark 
were correct, the late expedition to Spain, to observe the 
total eclipse of the sun, though planned with so much care 
by astronomers of eminence, must have been an unmingled 
folly. They could only describe appearances, not realities; 
and what could science gain by all their observations? 
Why, then, may not the Bible narrative be equally in¬ 
structive, equally definite in its teaching, though it be a 
record of appearances alone? Appearances are, in truth, 
the only materials from which every science is derived, and 


322 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the medium by which alone it is applicable to the use of 
mankind. 

The objection, then, to the optical construction of the 
sacred narrative, that it deprives it of all definite meaning, 
and gives it a non-natural sense, exactly reverses, the real 
truth. The record of visible appearances is quite as defi¬ 
nite, in its own nature, as a statement of physical causes, 
and is far easier to understand; and no simple reader, in 
the age when Moses wrote, could attach any other meaning 
to the words than that which is so rashly condemned. 

“The difficulties arise,” it is said, “for the first time, 
when we seek to import a meaning into language, which it 
certainly never could have conveyed to those to whom it 
was originally addressed. Unless we go the length of sup¬ 
posing the simple account of the Hebrew cosmogonist to be 
a series of awkward equivocations, in which he attempted 
to give a representation widely different from the facts, 
without trespassing against literal truth, we can find no 
difficulty in interpreting his words.” This remark is strictly 
true. But it justifies the interpretation it is supposed to 
condemn, and condemns that which it is supposed to justify. 
The meaning of light, to the early Hebrew, could not be 
the undulations of a subtile ether, diffused through infinite 
space, but simply a state of the earth, air, and sky, in 
which objects were clearly visible to the senses of men 
The sun, moon, and stars, to the same readers, could never 
be supposed to mean immense balls of solid matter, lumin¬ 
ous, or non-luminous, floating at large in the depths of 
space, but visible discs of light, seen daily revolving 
through the sky. The whole force, then, of this first ob¬ 
jection to the sacred narrative, is due simply to a denatu¬ 
ralization of some minds, through dwelling amidst the me¬ 
chanical relations of physical astronomy, till they reverse 
the laws of criticism and the facts of history, and put light 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


323 


for darkness, and darkness for light, in their attempt to 
fasten error and contradiction on the Word of G-od. 

2. The second maxim, implied in that view of the narra¬ 
tive, which retains the literal days, and accepts also the 
facts of geology, is the distinctness of the absolute creation, 
in the first verse from the six days of creation that follow. 
The result, indeed, is much the same, if we suppose the 
Hebrew word bara to be taken in a looser sense, and that 
the first verse is merely a summary of the whole account 
that is afterward given. On this view nothing whatever 
would be said of the absolute formation of matter, but the 
whole would begin with the chaos or confusion before the 
first day. 

Assuming, however, that the first verse relates to the ab¬ 
solute beginning of creation, or the first origin of things, 
an objection is started from the mention of the heavens on 
the second day. It is inferred that “ during those indefinite 
ages there was no sky, no local habitation for the sun, 
moon, and stars, even supposing them to have been included 
in the original material.” 

This difficulty would be real, if the heavens in Scripture 
meant always the lower firmament alone. But this is quite 
untrue. The apostle speaks of being caught up into “the 
third heaven,” which certainly was not the region of the 
clouds. Hence, although the lowest heavens were made on 
the second day, the first verse may still retain a very clear 
and definite meaning. The first heaven is that of sense, or 
the visible firmament. The second heaven is that of science 
and philosophy, or the depths of the starry universe. The 
third heaven is that of faith and spiritual vision, or that 
immediate unvailing of the Divine presence to pure and sin¬ 
less spirits, which answers to the Holy of Holies in the 
Jewish Temple. The opening words of the Bible, then> 
may refer immediately to the third heavens of glory, and 


324 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the heavens of sidereal astronomy; while the mention of 
the lower heavens, or visible arch of the sky, comes in its 
natural place, in connection with terrestrial and atmospheric 
changes, among the steps by which our earth was prepared 
to be the dwelling of man. 

3. The third principle involved in this view of the pas¬ 
sage, when compared with the facts of geology, is that the 
darkness and confusion in the second verse refers to a 
state which intervened between the Tertiary and Human 
period. And here a double objection is urged. First, on 
the authority of Hugh Miller, it is affirmed that such a 
break “is by no means supported by geological phenomena, 
and is now rejected by all geologists whose authority is 
valuable.” And next, it is said that such a construction 
falls short of the natural meaning of the text, and reduces 
the third verse from a noble description, the admiration of 
ages, to a pitiful caput mortuum of empty verbiage. 

The course of thought pursued in the Fifth Essay, in its 
labored assault on the truth of Scripture, is here singularly 
perplexed and illogical. Hr. Chalmers and Hugh Miller, 
and all others who accept either the view of literal - days or 
day-periods, agree in affirming that the optical construction 
of the narrative, with reference to a human observer, is the 
only one historically natural, or critically possible. This 
their unanimous consent is cast aside on the strength of 
naked assertions, which directly reverse the manifest truth, 
the experience of every observatory, and the constant usage 
of the whole Bible. Both these classes of writers agree 
in the firm conviction that the narrative in Genesis and the 
facts of science do agree, though they vary in their con¬ 
ception of the precise nature of their agreement. This 
their consent is equally cast aside, as the effect of scientific 
ignorance or of theological prejudice, and no scruples, either 
of modesty or of pity, lessen the confidence with which 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


325 


their consenting judgment is denounced and condemned. 
But Hugh Miller, after holding once the view of literal 
days, renounced it for that of day-periods, on the ground 
that geology allows of’no gap or break between the Tertiary 
and Human periods. His argument is founded on eight 
animals, and two kinds of shells, which he believed to be 
common to the two eras. On the other hand M. D’Or- 
bigny, in a work on fossil geology, of which a summary is 
given in two volumes of Lardner’s Museum of Science, 
and which includes an examination of eighteen thousand 
species of radiata and mollusca alone, has deduced conclu¬ 
sions diametrically opposite. He shows that there are 
twenty-nine eras, in each of which the genera are partly 
the same as in the preceding one, and partly different; but 
that the species, except only one or two per cent, in a few 
cases, are all distinct, and imply a new creation. Even in 
respect to genera, the contrast between the Human and Ter¬ 
tiary periods is the widest of the whole—these two form¬ 
ing, in Hugh Miller’s theory, part of the same day—since 
only five hundred and forty are old genera, or common to 
the Tertiary, and one thousand, three hundred and twenty- 
seven are new. But according to the same writer, the 
species are entirely new, and “the entire fauna and flora 
of the last Tertiary period were destroyed.” 

In the Christian Observer, January, 1858, this argument 
has been developed, in disproof of the fundamental asser¬ 
tion, on which Hugh Miller’s theory depends. The essay¬ 
ist quotes a reference to it in Archdeacon Pratt’s able 
pamphlet on Scripture and Science, in which he speaks of it 
as conclusive, and gives a summary of the facts, and the nec¬ 
essary inference to which they lead. He does this, however, 
merely to show “ the trenchant manner in which theological 
geologists overthrow one another’s theories,” and carefully 
abstains from touching either the facts or the argument. 


326 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


On the contrary, he proceeds to observe that “Hugh Miller 
was perfectly aware of the difficulty involved in his view 
of the question,” and proceeds to give the details of his 
theory; when those details have nothing whatever to do 
with the argument thus dismissed; and, instead of Mr. 
Miller being aware of the difficulty, his theory is based on 
a conclusion drawn from the supposed sameness of eight 
species, in direct opposition to this large induction of M. 
D’Orbigny, from twenty-nine successive eras, and nearly 
twenty thousand species; and from eighteen hundred genera 
in the Human and Tertiary periods alone. What is still 
more strange in the presence of such an extract, Hugh 
Miller’s assertion, thus largely disproved, is accepted for a 
sufficient proof of the untenability of the theory of Chal¬ 
mers, and that its abandonment was “not without the com¬ 
pulsion of irresistible evidence; and that the view which 
results from the large induction of M. D’Orbigny, after 
cataloguing twenty thousand species, and which is summed 
up in two volumes of the Museum of Science, as the latest 
and ripest conclusion of geology, “is now rejected by all 
geologists whose authority is valuable.” 

Such a style of argument, where the truth of Scripture 
is in question, can hardly be too strongly condemned. It 
betrays, if not a settled purpose to damage the authority 
of the Bible by any artifice of special pleading, at least a 
total incapacity to discern the really-vital points of the con¬ 
troversy, the true limits of authority, and the results of a 
wide and genuine induction of geological evidence. All 
that is true and beautiful in Hugh Miller’s writings is cast 
aside; and a solitary error, since disproved by the evidence 
of thirty eras and twenty thousand species, is stolen from 
him, and dipped in poison, that it may inflict a deadly 
wound on the faith which was dearest to his heart. 

Let us now inquire whether the other objection has more 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


327 


weight. ' Does this view reduce a noble and sublime descrip¬ 
tion to “a pitiful caput mortuum of empty verbiage?” It 
supposes that, after the Tertiary period, and by the convul¬ 
sion which gave birth to the mountain-chains of the Alps 
and Andes, our planet was wrapped in a sea of vapor, and 
buried for a long period in midnight and impenetrable 
gloom. This chaos, optically and physically complete, it 
assumes to be the starting-point of the inspired description. 
After an unknown period of total darkness “upon the'face 
of the deep,” light broke out suddenly, on the first day, at 
God’s command, over the whole surface of the globe. 
Now, it is self-evident that such a fact is all that Moses 
and- his cotemporaries, and all readers of the Pentateuch 
down to our own days, could naturally or reasonably under¬ 
stand by the words. They could never suppose it to mean 
the creation of luminiferous ether, filling infinite space, nor 
the commencement of certain undulations, regulated by un¬ 
known mechanical laws. The light has distinct reference 
to the previous darkness. The darkness was “upon the 
face of the deep,” and the deep is no synonym for infinite 
space, but for the earth’s surface, while mainly covered 
with water, before the dry land appeared. The instant¬ 
aneous breaking forth of light over our world, where all 
before had been wrapped in utter gloom, is one of the no¬ 
blest images which can enter the human mind; and those 
who can call it empty verbiage seem to need themselves a 
similar process of mental illumination. 

4. The omission of the long eras of geology, which the 
same view of the passage implies, can furnish no real 
objection to its truth. On the contrary, it seems to result 
inevitably from the character of this Divine message. It 
describes a brief work of God’s almighty power, by which 
our planet was fitted to be the abode of man. All the ob¬ 
jects which man sees around him are referred in it to their 


328 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Divine Author. His power is shown in the swift comple¬ 
tion of so great a work, his wisdom in its orderly progress; 
and a moral character is infused into the whole, when 
six days of creative energy are seen to be followed by the 
Divine Sabbath of rest, a precedent for the use of man¬ 
kind in every later age. Nothing is wanting, nothing su¬ 
perfluous. A description of the earth’s fluid nucleus, of 
primary rocks, of the flora of the coal measures, or of the 
extinct animals of the Secondary and Tertiary periods, would 
have been only a strange and unnatural excrescence in such 
an early message from God to man. 

5. The objection to this view, from the break which it 
requires, has been thus stated. 

“ The hypothesis was first promulgated at a time when 
the gradual and regular formation of the earth’s strata was 
not seen or admitted so clearly as it is now. Geologists 
were more disposed to believe in great catastrophes. Buck- 
land’s theory supposes that previous to the appearance of 
the present races of animals and vegetables there was a great 
gap in the globe’s history; that the earth was completely 
depopulated, as well of marine as land animals, and that the 
creation of all existing plants and animals was coeval with 
that of man. This theory is by no means supported by 
geological phenomena, and is now, we suppose, rejected by 
all geologists, whose authority is valuable.” 

Now, let us compare with this positive assertion the state¬ 
ment of Dr. Lardner—“Museum of Science,” xi, 71, 1856— 
based on the labors of Murchison and D’Orbigny. 

“ The anticipations of Sir R. Murchison have been more 
than realized by the subsequent researches of M. D’Or¬ 
bigny, founded on his own observations, which extended 
over a large portion of the New as well as Old World; 
and upon the entire mass of facts connected with the analy¬ 
ses of the crust of the earth, collected by the observations 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


329 


of the most eminent geologists in all parts of the world. 
It appears from these researches that, during the long 
periods of geological time, from the first appearance of or¬ 
ganized life on the globe to the period when the human 
race and its cotemporaneous tribes were called into exist¬ 
ence, the world was peopled by a series of animal and 
vegetable kingdoms, which were successively destroyed by 
violent convulsions of the crust, which produced as many 
devastating deluges. The remains of each of these ancient 
creatures are deposited in a series of layers; and it has 
been found that each successive animal kingdom was com¬ 
posed of its own peculiar species, which did not appear in 
any posterior or succeeding creation, but that genera once 
created were frequently revived in succeeding periods; that 
many of these genera, however, became extinct long before 
the human period.” 

“ By careful analyses of the strata and the animal re¬ 
mains, geologists have ascertained with a high degree of 
probability, if not with absolute moral certainty, that sub¬ 
sequently to the first appearance of the forms of animal 
life, which took place after the fourth great convulsion of 
our globe, there were at least twenty-eight successive con¬ 
vulsions of a like nature, each of which was attended with 
the complete destruction of the animals and plants which 
existed on the globe. In fine, after the latest of these 
catastrophes, when the last strata of the Tertiary period 
were deposited, the most recent exertion of Creative Power 
took place , and the globe was peopled with the tribes which 
now inhabit it , including the human race.” 

“ The disruption of the earth’s crust, through which the 
chain of the great Alps was forced up to its present eleva¬ 
tion, which, according to M. D’Orbigny, was simultaneous 
with that which forced up the Chilian Andes, a chain which 

extends over three thousand miles of the western continent, 

28 


330 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


terminated the Tertiary age, and preceded immediately the 
creation of the human race and its concomitant tribes. 
The waters of the seas and oceans, lifted from their beds 
by this immense perturbation, swept over the continents with 
irresistible force, destroying the entire fauna and flora of 
the last Tertiary period, and burying its ruins in the de¬ 
posits that ensued. By this dislocation, Europe underwent 
a complete change of form. Secondary effects followed, 
which have left 4heir traces on every part of the earth’s 
surface. When the seas had settled into their new beds, 
and the outlines of the land were permanently defined, the 
latest and greatest act of creation was accomplished, by 
clothing the earth with the vegetation that now covers it, 
peopling the land and water with the animal tribes which 
now exist, and calling into being the human race.” (xii, 
p. 552.) 

It is clear, from this comparison, that the statement in 
the objection exactly reverses the real truth with regard 
to the latest conclusions of geology. With the failure of 
its foundation, the whole fabric of skeptical inference 
reared upon it falls at once into ruins. 

6. But another objection has been drawn from the events 
of the fourth day; though in reality it is only the first 
difficulty with regard to the optical style of the narrative, 
in one special application. “What,” it is asked, “were the 
new relations which the heavenly bodies assumed to the 
newly-modified earth, and to the human race? They had 
marked out seasons, days, and years, and given light for 
ages before to the earth, and to the animals which pre¬ 
ceded man as its inhabitants.” 

The reply is evident. With those previous ages and 
their condition, and the plants and animals that lived in 
them, man and his cotemporaries had no more to do than 
if their theater had been some wholly different world. It 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


331 


was out of the ruins of these former creations that the 
present arose. To man himself, or any of the creatures 
living on the earth, and which have enjoyed the sun¬ 
shine to the present hour, that fourth day was the first 
on which sun, or moon, or stars appeared. It was the 
earliest of those appearances to the eyes of the present 
creation, which have lasted to this day’s sunrise, or to 
the shining of the stars this night in the firmament of 
heaven. 

If any doubt could remain of the adequacy of this ex¬ 
planation, it will be removed at once by the comparison of 
other passages in the Word of God. Thus we read in St. 
Peter of the world before the Flood, that “the heavens and 
earth which were of old, being overflowed with water, 
perished; but the heavens and earth which are now, are 
kept in store, reserved unto fire.” Here it is plain that 
the present heavens and earth are described as distinct 
from those before the Flood, and succeeding in their room. 
This plainly can not refer to the substance of the earth, or 
of the heavenly bodies, but to their relations to the senses 
of man; so that the vault of the sky, and the surface of 
the earth, are constantly compared to a robe or vesture 
which may he rolled away. The interpretation, then, which 
refers—Genesis i, 14-19—to the solid globes of the sun, the 
moon, and the stars, as they exist in space, and hence in¬ 
fers a contradiction between the Bible and modern science, 
does no less violence to the rules of sound criticism than 
to the reverence due to the Word of God. 

7. Another supposed contradiction to the truths of science 
has been found in the mention of the firmament. The 
word, in Hebrew, means simply an expanse. But it is 
urged that the context requires us to admit that the writer 
viewed this expanse as a solid vault, since it is said else¬ 
where to have pillars, foundations, doors, and windows; and 


332 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

here separates waters which are above from those which 
are below. To insist on the derivation, it is said, is mere 
quibbling, in the face of these clear proofs that the Bible 
ascribes to it a real solidity. 

There is something really amazing in the self-confidence 
with which such charges of ignorance and folly are brought 
against the sacred writers. A little modesty and common- 
sense would have shown that an argument which proves 
too much proves nothing, and that the sacred writers could 
never have thought that rain came down, literally, through 
square openings in a solid vault of the sky; nor that the 
sun, moon, and stars, if set in a solid vault, supported by 
pillars, could revolve daily from east to west, and reappear 
in the east again. The same passage of noble poetry which 
tells us, in magnifying the power of Giod, that “ the pillars 
of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof,” also 
tells us that “ He stretcheth out the north over the empty 
space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” If one 
phrase, taken alone, seems to imply solid supports, the 
other seems just as plainly to anticipate the views "of modern 
science, and represents our world as self-supported in empty 
space. If windows are ascribed to heaven in one place, as a 
figure to represent the descent of rain from above, their ex¬ 
istence seems just as strongly denied in another. “ If the 
Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be ?” 
Once admit the principle that all these phrases are vivid 
metaphors, to express great truths which were evident to 
the senses of mankind, and all is consistent, easy, and 
natural. The foundations of the earth, the pillars of the 
sky, denote simply the firmness and steadfastness of these 
two main objects of the knowledge of man, the wide land¬ 
scape spread around him, and the blue vault every-where 
above his head. The opening of the windows of heaven 
denotes the descent of rain from that upper sky, where no 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


333 


water could before be seen to exist, and is a metaphor 
plainly drawn from the skylights of some human building. 
The placing of the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament 
has no reference to a solid structure, in which case they 
would be fixed and immovable, but to their permanent 
manifestation, as moving daily through the azure vault of 
the heaven. 

The only phrase which gives the least countenance to 
the gross, material view of the firmament, a view which 
plainly is refuted, rather than confirmed, by the etymology, 
is the mention of the waters above and below it, which it 
separates from each other. But a very little patient 
thought will suggest at once the true meaning. The blue 
vault or expanse is a result relative to human vision. Its 
existence depends on the mutual relation of the eyes of men 
and animals, and the optical properties of the earth’s atmos¬ 
phere, through which alone we obtain a knowledge of objects 
beyond the reach of our other senses. It is, in short, the 
sensible limit between the visible and the invisible. All 
water, then, which is visible to the senses, either in the 
seas or in the clouds, is described as being under the 
firmament; and all which is invisible, and concealed from 
the senses, with equal propriety of phrase, is described 
as above the firmament. It is out of this state of invis¬ 
ibility, that it reappears continually in rain, to fertilize 
the earth. This change, from the invisible to the visible, 
is the opening of the windows of heaven, by which the 
waters above the firmament descend and mingle with those 
below. 

The relation, then, between the latest conclusions of mod¬ 
ern science, and the Bible history of creation, is one of in¬ 
dependent truth, but of perfect harmony. Science reveals 
a long series of changes, once unsuspected, by which the 
strata of our planet were formed, and a succession of nearly 


834 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


thirty vegetable and animal creations, which were suited, 
no doubt, to the state of the earth in which they appeared, 
but were successively destroyed by volcanic convulsions on 
the largest scale, by which new mountain chains rose into 
being. The most complete separation of species, an im¬ 
mense preponderance of new genera, and the rise of the 
most stupendous mountains—the Alps and Andes—separate 
the last of these from the present human creation. Science 
proves that, before man' appeared, the earth must have been 
waste and desolate; all previous forms of life were destroyed 
and entombed; and though its strata might be completed, 
its whole surface was covered with mighty inundations, and 
its atmosphere loaded with the vapor from the seas and 
oceans, which such a vast volcanic eruption could not fail 
to send up in immense and enormous volumes, wrapping the 
whole surface of the planet, perhaps for years or centuries, 
in thick impenetrable darkness. But science, while it may 
reveal the fact that man, and existing planets and animals, 
are cotemporary in the geological sense, is far too dim- 
sighted to disclose the times, the order, and the details of 
that last creation in which all these had their birth. For 
any thing which its most skillful interpreters can tell us, 
this work might have lasted through thousands of years, 
or Almighty Power might have compressed it into a single 
day. It is here that the Word of Grod steps in, and begin¬ 
ning its narrative with that creation which now exists, and 
with which alone man has any thing to do, at least till these 
recent discoveries were disentombed, reveals to us the order, 
the swift fulfillment, and the moral grandeur of this great 
work of G-od. The fourth commandment pronounced on 
Sinai, by the lips of Jehovah himself, gives us the sublime 
fact, and its application to the instruction and guidance of 
mankind. “ Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, 
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 335 

God. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, 
the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh 
day; wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hal¬ 
lowed it.” 


336 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE, CONTINUED. 

In the previous chapter a brief reply has been offered to 
modern arguments against the inspiration and authority of 
the Bible, and its supposed contradiction to the truths 
of astronomy and geology. The other topics, the History 
of the Flood, the Unity of the Human Race, and the con¬ 
clusions of Ethnology, have not been so prominent in the 
most recent attacks, and their treatment would lead too far 
from the main purpose of the present work. But it seems 
desirable to clear up some difficulties of a more general 
kind; and to point out the line of truth and wisdom, he-, 
tween that superstitious abuse of Scripture, which leads to 
“a fantastical science,” and that undue confidence in 
imperfect science, and contempt for the authority of the 
Divine oracles, which leads inevitably to “ a heretical 
religion.” 

The Bible, in the view of the Christian Church, consists 
of a series of inspired records, or messages from God to 
mankind. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” 

It “can not be broken.” It is God himself who “spake 
in time past to the fathers by the prophets.” It is the 
Holy Ghost, who spoke by Moses, by David, by Isaiah. 
“ Prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but 
holy men of God spake, being moved or borne along by 
the Holy Ghost.” It is “the Lord God of the holy proph¬ 
ets,” by whom these various messages of Divine truth were 
given to men. The Son of God himself suffered on the 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 337 

cross, “that the Scriptures of the prophets might be ful¬ 
filled.” And he has told us himself that “it is easier for 
heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the 
law to fail.” 

Such statements as these, from the lips of the Savior and 
his apostles, might be expected to secure the Scriptures 
from imputations of contradiction, error, and falsehood, at 
least on the part of those who profess to be disciples of 
Christ. They do not require us to believe that these mes¬ 
sages are absolutely perfect, without the least speck or flaw, 
in the form in which they reach the hands of every indi¬ 
vidual, after translation and transcription have been at 
work for thousands of years. They do not, perhaps, require 
us to decide how near to the fountain-head some minute, 
microscopical faults, from the infirmity of copyists or aman¬ 
uenses, may have been permitted to come. But they do 
seem clearly to imply that the gift was perfect, and free 
from all error, as first communicated from the God of truth 
to his chosen messengers, or curiously and wisely fashioned, 
by the use of their faculties, within their minds, whether 
in history, precept, doctrine, devotion, or spiritual medita¬ 
tion. The whole, therefore, comes to us plainly stamped 
with a Divine authority. And this authority must extend 
to every jot and tittle of its contents, till some adequate 
evidence, external or internal, shows it to be a fault of 
translation or transmission; a slight flaw, in whatever way 
occasioned, which has become attached to the original and 
Divinely-perfect message. 

The Bible, again, is marked throughout by the unity of a 
great and moral purpose. Its design is not to interfere 
with the slow and silent progress of natural science, but to 
make sinners wise unto salvation. It was written for the 
use of every age, from the time when its earliest messages 

were given, and not to gratify the scientific curiosity of our 

29 


338 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


own busy generation. A treatise on astronomy, geology, 
chemistry, electricity, or botany, would evidently be quite 
out of place in these lively oracles of God. They would, 
by such an excrescence, renounce in part their own true 
character, and descend from their sacred hight into a lower 
sphere. We have no right to expect in them a premature 
relation of the law of gravitation, and the Newtonian the¬ 
ory of the heavens, or of the undulatory theory of light, 
or of the chemical ‘constitution of matter, or a thousand 
other natural truths, which the progress of science may, 
perhaps, in future ages, make known to men. The allusions 
in Scripture to all these subjects, we might reasonably infer, 
would be incidental, secondary, and collateral. 

On the other hand, the Bible is not a message to pure, 
disembodied spirits; but is addressed to man in his actual 
character, as a being composed of body and soul, born in 
the weakness of infancy, placed in the midst of this lower, 
visible creation, and trained through his senses to the 
knowledge of himself, of nature, and of God. A revela¬ 
tion designed for such a being must inevitably include 
within it many facts that belong to almost every field of 
scientific inquiry. All nature must be laid under contribu¬ 
tion, like the treasures of Egypt for the tabernacle, to form 
this marvelous and complicated structure of heavenly 
wisdom. Facts, which belong to geography, chronology, 
botany, zoology, astronomy, civil legislation, and political 
history, meet us, and must be expected to meet us, in 
almost every page of the Sacred narrative. 

These simple remarks are enough to clear away two 
great errors, on opposite sides, by which Christian faith has 
been clouded with a dangerous skepticism, or loaded with a 
superstitious excrescence. They show at once how vain 
must be the attempt to maintain a doctrinal authority in 
Scripture, and still to impute to it a merely human 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


339 


character, wherever it touches on questions of natural science. 
For the two elements are blended throughout no less inti¬ 
mately than body and soul are united in man himself. Let 
us take, for instance, the leading truth of Christianity, the 
resurrection of our Lord. No truth can be more central to 
the revelation, or more intensely spiritual in its true sig¬ 
nificance. Yet it contains points of intimate connection 
with a dozen different sciences. It is a geographical truth; 
for he rose from the tomb at Calvary, and ascended from 
Olivet. It is a chronological truth; for he rose the third 
day, during the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, and on 
the first day of the week, which begins the long, unbroken 
series of Christian Sabbaths. It is a physiological truth; 
for the body which was laid in the grave, was raised on the 
third day, before it had seen corruption. It is connected 
with a truth of botany; for that sacred body had been em¬ 
balmed with myrrh and aloes, a hundred pounds in weight. 
It is a truth of political history, for crucifixion was a Ro¬ 
man and not a Jewish punishment, and a Jewish watch, by 
permission of a Roman governor, had been set over the 
tomb. It is connected with important facts of mental 
philosophy; for the disciples believed not for joy, and won¬ 
dered. It is connected equally with the science of juris¬ 
prudence, and the laws of evidence; for he appeared openly, 
“not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of 
God, who did eat and drink with him after he rose 
from the dead.” And hence the idea of retaining the au¬ 
thority of the Bible, as in any sense Divine, and making 
an exception for parts into which there enters some scientific 
element, is utterly delusive and impracticable. The doctrines 
and the facts, the precepts and the histories, are joined in¬ 
separably by the Spirit of God himself, and man, with his 
most laborious efforts, can not put them asunder. Deny the 
authority of the facts, and you destroy the whole revelation. 


340 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

But the same truths will serve equally to shut out an op¬ 
posite error, which would make the Bible, because of its 
Divine origin, a substitute for the researches of human 
science, and would strive to extract a complete system of 
natural philosophy from its pages. The Bible, from its 
nature as a true and Divine history, must contain valuable 
materials for many branches of science, but not the sciences 
themselves. In speaking of natural objects, it deals with 
facts, patent to the senses of men, and not with secret 
causes that lie hidden from general view. It speaks of 
earthquakes, but not of the volcanic heavings of a fluid 
nucleus, or of the internal combustion out of- which they 
may arise. It speaks of sunrise and sunset, of the waxing 
and waning of the moon, but not of the earth’s revolution, 
or the laws that guide the motion of our satellite, and de¬ 
termine its phases. It speaks of hail mingled with fire, 
sent from heaven, but propounds no theory of electricity to 
account for the violence of the thunder-storm, and the 
strange contrast of heat and cold in the same phenomenon. 
It alludes to trees and plants, from the cedar of Lebanon 
to the hyssop on the wall; but no formal classification of 
them, as endogens and exogens, or in any other wayf is 
found in its pages. Thus, while it furnishes rich materials, 
in various ways, to men of science, it speaks a language in¬ 
telligible to all mankind. It is mere folly and ignorance 
to tax the Scriptures with falsehood because of this popular 
character, which is one mark of their Divine wisdom. The 
contrast between scientific and popular statements is not a 
contrast between truth and falsehood; but between truth in 
its simpler and alphabetic forms, which lie within the reach 
of a child, and in those deeper combinations which lie re¬ 
mote from the surface, and are gradually disclosed by a 
patient induction from multiplied observations and experi¬ 
ments. Every sunrise and sunset, observed in every spot 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 341 

on the earth’s surface, is a separate truth of astronomical 
science, no less than material for poetical description. But 
the revolution of the earth on its axis is a wider and more 
comprehensive truth, which sums up and explains thousands 
of sunsets in ten thousand spots on the surface of the earth, 
and reveals, with scientific accuracy, the order and interval 
of their succession from day to day. It is thus equally an 
error to deny that the Scriptures furnish, on Divine au¬ 
thority, facts which constitute the partial materials for 
various branches of natural science; or to suppose that 
their statements embody and define any scientific theory, 
teach any particular cosmogony, and supersede the labors 
of patient induction by a physical theory of nature revealed 
from heaven. 

Another form, in which the attempt has been made to 
restrict the authority of Scripture, is by exempting from 
the range of Divine revelation all those departments of 
truth “for the discovery of which he has faculties specially 
provided by his Creator.” A general charge of ignorance 
or negligence has been brought against the whole body of 
Christian divines, because they have overlooked this great 
axiom, or adopted it with such limitations as destroy its 
value. This doctrine is the starting-point of the Essay on 
the Mosaic Cosmogony, and the goal to which it returns. 
Under its friendly guidance, the Divine record of creation, 
to which the Son of God appealed with holy reverence, is 
to resume the dignity and value which it had lost while 
esteemed to be the Word of God, by ranking as the specu¬ 
lation of some Hebrew sciolist, who had never learned the 
modesty of modern science, and made a bold, but mistaken 
'guess at the origin of the world. Men have regarded it, 
for ages, as the inspired truth of God; but it is cheering 
to be assured, that their respect for it need not be in the 
least diminished, when they come to regard it as the blind 


342 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and ignorant conjecture of some unknown pretender to 
Divine communications. 

Let us see, first, how far this maxim will carry us on the 
road of unbelief. We have the faculty of memory, specially 
provided to teach us the facts of history, or of human test¬ 
imony. Therefore no facts of history can be included in 
a Divine message. We have the faculty of imagination, 
specially provided to make us capable of poetic feeling and 
thought. Therefore poetry and its high imagery must be 
excluded also. We have a conscience, designed and adapted 
to teach us moral truths. Therefore a Divine revelation 
must pretend to teach no morality. We have reason and 
judgment, specially designed and adapted to combine facts 
and truths together, and derive inferences from their union. 
Therefore all reason and argument, and all appeals to the 
understanding, must be banished from the messages of 
God. By the moral sense, combined with the faculty of 
reason, we can gain some general conceptions of the First 
Cause and his moral attributes. Therefore the knowledge 
of God himself, his nature, attributes, and will, must form 
no part of Divine revelation. The principle, so highly 
praised, is thus a simple and effectual expedient for getting 
rid of all revelation whatever, by leaving it no single sub¬ 
ject, within the range and compass of the human faculties, 
which it is permitted to reveal. 

The maxim, then, which theologians are blamed for be¬ 
ing slow to receive, is grossly and manifestly absurd. No 
truth can possibly be revealed, unless there be a faculty 
fitted to receive the revelation. A landscape can be un¬ 
vailed only to the seeing eye, and melodies of music only 
made known to the hearing ear. Where the faculties have 
been obscured by sin, the work of revelation may be two¬ 
fold, and include the opening of blind eyes, and the un¬ 
stopping of deaf ears, as well as the exhibition of visions 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


343 


of heavenly truth, or melodious utterances of Divine love. 
But a faculty which is fitted to receive, and if to receive, 
then by diligence and care to discover, moral and spir¬ 
itual truth, is not a substitute which excludes Divine reve¬ 
lation, but the previous condition on which its possibility 
depends. 

But the context in which this maxim appears, and the 
purpose to which it has been applied, makes its error 
doubly conspicuous. It is used to justify the degradation 
of the first chapter of Genesis from a Divine message into a 
mere human speculation. Now, if there be one part of the 
Bible history which is beyond the reach of a merely human 
knowledge, it must be a record of the steps of creation 
before the first existence of man. All later events named 
in the Bible might have been handed down, without a 
Divine inspiration, by the ordinary processes of human 
tradition. Here alone such a tradition was plainly impos¬ 
sible. Even modern science must here be completely at 
fault. Astronomers might sooner be able to give us a 
chart of the bays and islands of the lost Pleiad, or of a 
planet of Sirius, than geologists, by their bwn researches, 
to recount in detail the events of the six natural days which 
immediately preceded the first appearance of man on the 
face of the globe. Yet this is the chapter out of the whole 
Bible, which it has been labored to deprive of a Divine 
origin, on the plea that what man can learn by his un¬ 
aided faculties can never be the object of supernatural 
revelation.' 

Let us examine the maxim more closely. It is not wi- 
common, with Christian writers, to assume a wide contrast 
between truths which man might learn without Divine com¬ 
munication, and those for which it is indispensably required. 
They do not restrict the authority of the Bible to truths of 
the second class alone; but still, it is their presence on 


344 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


which the value of the gift is supposed mainly to depend. 
The same contrast, however, has been borrowed by skep¬ 
tical writers, and worked out on its negative side. It then 
becomes a powerful engine to destroy the authority of re¬ 
vealed religion. Every fact of history and every moral 
truth, since it might be learned by the right use of our 
natural powers, is exempted from the province of revela¬ 
tion. Nothing is left to revealed religion but a few mys¬ 
terious doctrines, which are to be blindly received, because 
it is impossible to understand them, and they are unfit, in 
their own nature, for any exercise of the human conscience 
or reason. 

It will be found, I think, on closer reflection, that there 
is no ground for this line of rigid demarkation. All truth 
is mutually related and harmonious. In the mind of Om¬ 
niscient Wisdom, all things past, present, and future, and 
all truths of every kind, must be united in one vast scheme 
of Providence, in which there is no flaw. “ He is the Rock, 
his work is perfect.” Every reasonable creature, whose 
powers are not impaired by sin, has some partial knowledge 
of this mighty scheme, though it is only like a drop in an 
immeasurable ocean. But he has also a capacity of prog¬ 
ress. He can observe more and more, himself; and he 
can learn more and more from the testimony of other ob¬ 
servers. He can combine, more and more fully, these ele¬ 
ments of knowledge, and thus discover slowly the laws of 
Providence, both in the natural and spiritual world. There 
seems to- be no essential separation between truths attain¬ 
able in course of time by the use of our natural faculties, 
and others quite unattainable. But the contrast is almost 
infinite, in the degree of facility with which particular 
truths may be learned by observation alone, by the help 
of human testimony, or by direct revelations from the 
Fountain of all truth and wisdom. 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


345 


Let us take, for example, the science of astronomy. A 
single student, if his life were indefinitely prolonged, 
might multiply his observations, perfect his instruments, 
and enlarge his attainments in analysis, till the discoveries 
of thousands had all been equaled and surpassed by him¬ 
self alone. He might thus amass larger and more exact 
materials than we now possess, and combine them by a 
profound analysis which should throw the Principia and 
Mecanique Celeste, and the labors of Plana, Struve, Airy, 
Herschel, Adams, and Leverrier, completely into the shade. 
But before this pinnacle could possibly be reached, long, 
interminable ages must have rolled away. Facts, which he 
might have learned in a moment from the simple testimony 
of another observer, would have become immensely remote, 
before he could rediscover them, if at all, as inferences 
from his own discoveries and observations. 

Now this, which is true of astronomy, must be still more 
true of our human knowledge of the character, works, and 
ways of Hod. Even apart from the effects of sin, our life¬ 
time is far too short for any large advance, by our own 
unaided wisdom, in a science so glorious. This knowledge 
is too wonderful for us: it is high, and we can not attain 
unto it. The discoveries of a lifetime would be the merest 
atom in this boundless ocean of truth. Even the help of 
our fellow-men could do only a very little to facilitate our 
progress in this pathway toward clearer light. But if our 
Maker himself were to condescend to become our teacher, 
and out of the stores of his infinite wisdom to select the 
truths most helpful to our progress, and still within the 
range of our actual capacity, then would our progress be 
far more rapid and easy. In the humble use Qf this Divine 
aid, we might soon leave far behind us, in the low and 
misty valley, those who had never received, or who had 
neglected and despised it, and travel, with swift and hope- 


346 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


ful steps, up the mountain side toward the summit of the 
everlasting hills. 

But the debasing influence of sin on the human faculties, 
renders this contrast between the attainments possible in the 
use of natural powers alone, and by the aid of Divine reve¬ 
lation, far more complete. Men need not only to be taught, 
but to be made willing to learn. It is not enough that a 
wide landscape of heavenly truth is spread out before them. 
The eye of the soul must undergo a healing process, before 
they can gaze upon it undazzled, and without confusion. 
When the last glorious vision was revealed to the beloved 
Daniel, its brightness overwhelmed him, and he fell sense- 
. less to the earth. The same Person, who was the great 
object of prophecy, and the Revealer of what was noted in 
the Scripture of truth, needed also to act the part of a 
Divine Physician, and to strengthen the faculties of the 
prophet, as well as to provide a glorious vision on which 
his eyes might rest. He touched him once, and the 
swoon passed away, and he stood trembling, but mute 
with deep astonishment. He touched him again, and the 
dumbness was removed, and he was able to utter a confession 
of his' weakness, and to plead for further succor and grace. 
He touched him a third time, and strength was given, and the 
prophet could hearken to the message, and gaze, even to the 
last, upon that glorious vision. We have here a picture of 
the constant law of all Divine revelations to a world of sin¬ 
ners. The Revealer must also himself become the Physician; 
or else the most glorious revelations, of unseen things, and the 
largest disclosures of the ways of Providence, will be offered 
in vain, while a death-like stupor settles down upon the 
souls of men. 

Again, there are truths in the spiritual, just as in the 
natural world, which, from our actual position, must become 
known to us as facts, long before we could attain, by any 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


347 


process of reasoning, to deduce them from other truths, or 
to discover their secret laws. It is possible, for instance, 
that the luminosity of the sun, in contrast with the planets, 
may result in some way, now unknown to us, from its im- 
mensely-superior mass. In this case, the solar mass would 
be a physical cause, and the solar light a scientific corollary. 
But every inhabitant of the earth must experience the light 
of the sun, long before they could deduce the mass of the 
sun and planets from their observations, or obtain any 
glimpse of a scientific relation between two facts apparently 
so independent. In like manner, unfallen spirits must have 
distinct communion with the persons of the Godhead, long 
before they could possibly obtain any glimpse of the Trin¬ 
ity as an essential corollary from the perfection of the Di¬ 
vine Being;, and fallen sinners must have learned the 
atonement, and felt its recovering power, lon^ before they 
can be expected to gain any deep insight into its mystery, 
as reconciling the attributes of the Godhead in the infinitely- 
wise counsel of redeeming love. 

These truths, duly weighed, will fully explain the use 
and need of Divine revelation, without resorting to any 
broad separation of truth into two kinds, of which the first 
may be attained by human faculties alone, and the others 
need a miraculous interference. The question is not what 
men might possibly learn, supposing no moral averseness 
from Divine truth, and that their lives were prolonged in¬ 
definitely, to give them space for growing discoveries. This 
is the real question, how, within the limits of a very short 
probation, unwilling hearts may be bowed into the attitude 
of willing disciples, and dull and backward scholars may, 
within a few years or days, become wise to salvation, and 
gain a firm hold on those great doctrines of God’s holiness, 
their own corruption and guilt, and that way of acceptance 
through a divine atonement, on which all light, peace, holi- 


348 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


ness, and comfort depend. Every child, who consults an 
almanac to learn the time of a coming eclipse of the sun, 
has faculties, which might perhaps, in the course of some 
thousands or myriads of years, enable him to discover for 
himself the laws of the heavenly motions, to reproduce the 
Newtonian theory, and calculate the eclipse from his own 
observations. But an abstract capacity, loaded with such 
conditions, can not in the least diminish the worth of the 
almanac to such a child, as a ready and sufficient source 
of the information which he requires. Nay, the same is 
true of the most advanced astronomer. He may add, by 
his own labors, to the domain of science; but still he needs, 
both in his daily life and for the wants of his own observ¬ 
atory, to depend on the ready-made ephemeris, no less than 
the merest peasant or the youngest child. 

The maxim, then, that Divine revelation must be re¬ 
stricted to those subjects which lie entirely beyond the 
reach of human faculties, and which man could never pos¬ 
sibly learn without some direct aid from above, is no less 
opposed to sound philosophy than to the actual features of 
the Christian religion. If the Bible teaches little, com¬ 
paratively, on matters of physical science, it is because it 
moves on a higher level, and refers to spiritual objects; 
and still more because, in the secondary use which it 
makes of the works of nature, its purpose is best fulfilled 
by dwelling on those aspects of them which lie nearer the 
surface, and are open to the observation of all mankind. 
On the other hand, we have plainly faculties by which we 
can observe or acquire historical facts; and more than one- 
half of the Bible consists of history. We have a conscience 
by which we can discern right and wrong. Our Lord him¬ 
self appeals to the unbelieving Jews—“Yea, and why even 
of yourselves, judge ye not what is right?” The faculty 
was present, and, if used aright, there may have been no 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 


349 


absolute limit to its possible attainments. And yet the 
largest portion of the Bible, next to simple narrative, con¬ 
sists of moral precepts, examples, and exhortations. It is 
not to supply the absence of a missing faculty, but rather 
to heal the sickness of a faculty that is diseased by sin, 
and to quicken its slow and halting progress in the path¬ 
way of truth and wisdom, that Divine revelation is really 
given. Its authority, then, is stamped alike on every part 
of the truth which lies within the compass of its actual 
message. It is not a map of the world, but its statements 
of the places where sacred events occurred are accurate and 
true. It is not a system of optics or astronomy; but its 
mention of the visible work of the fourth day, of the sun¬ 
set when Abraham received his vision, or the sunrise when 
Sodom was destroyed, or the darkness at the crucifixion, is 
accurate and true. It is not a system of chronology, but 
the ages and the dates it records, when its true text has 
been ascertained, are, like the G-ospel itself, worthy of all 
acceptation. It has a holy anointing fi^om the Spirit of 
truth, which runs down to the very skirts of its garment. 
Its sayings, whatever their subject, when cleared from 
specks and flaws that may have been contracted here and 
there in the transmission of the message, are “ faithful and 
true;” for it is “the Lord God of the holy prophets” by 
whom these lively oracles have been given to mankind, 
“ to give light to them that are in darkness and the shadow 
of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” 


350 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 

The relation between the authority of the Bible and the 
claims of conscience is one of the most fundamental ques¬ 
tions in the whole range of practical theology. Any serious 
mistake on this point strikes at the foundations of Chris¬ 
tianity. If conscience be silenced, and external commands, 
through human interpreters, are blindly imposed on the 
whole Church, the way fs open for the fatal inroad of all 
kinds of superstition. If private conscience be made the 
supreme authority, and the Word of God be allowed no 
other force than it borrows from the choice or caprice of 
the individual, we accept a principle which is the root of 
all infidelity, and anarchy will be enthroned under the 
imposing titles of a spiritual religion and a reasonable 
faith. 

Statements, which have lately been made, seem clearly 
to present this later view as characteristic of the full man¬ 
hood of the individual Christian, and of the whole race of 
mankind. With the age of reflection, the spirit of Con¬ 
science comes to full strength, and assumes the throne. As 
an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits on 
the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides on the past, and 
legislates on the future, without appeal except to himself. 
He is the third great Teacher, and the last. He frames 
his code of laws, revising, adding, abrogating, as a wider 
and deeper experience gives him clearer light. The law 
of the child or the youth may be an external law, in mak- 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 351 

ing, enforcing, and applying which we have no share; 
which governs from the outside, compelling our will to 
bow, though our understanding be unconvinced and unen¬ 
lightened, and cares little whether you reluctantly submit 
or willingly agree. But the law which governs and edu¬ 
cates the man is internal; a voice which speaks within the 
conscience, and carries the understanding along with it; 
which treats us not as slaves, but as friends; which is not 
imposed by another power, but by our own enlightened 
will. This law of conscience marks the last stage in the 
education of the human race. We are now within the 
boundaries of this third period. The Church is left to 
herself, to work out by her natural faculties the principles 
of her own action. In learning this lesson she needed a 
firm spot, and has found it in the Bible. Had this con¬ 
tained precise statements of faith, or detailed precepts of 
conduct, we must either have become subject to an outer 
law, or have lost the highest instrument of self-education. 
But the Bible, from its form, is exactly suited to our 
wants, for even its doctrinal parts are best studied by view¬ 
ing them as records of the highest and greatest religious 
life of the times. Hence it is.to be used not to override, 
but to evoke, the voice of conscience. When the two ap¬ 
pear to differ, the pious Christian immediately concludes 
that he has not really understood the Bible. Its interpret¬ 
ation varies always in one direction, and tends to identify 
itself with the voice of conscience. From its form it can 
not exercise a despotism over the human spirit. If so, it 
would become an outer law at once, and throw back the 
world into the stage of childhood. But its form is such 
thdt it wins from us all the reverence of a supreme au¬ 
thority, and yet imposes on us no yoke of subjection. The 
principle of private judgment puts conscience between us 
and the Bible, and makes it the supreme interpreter, 


&52 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

whom it may be a duty to enlighten, hut never to 
disobey.* 

These statements, by a large amount of friendly violence, 
may perhaps be explained away into the simple truism, that 
the Gospel, in contrast to the Law of Moses, is a dispen¬ 
sation of liberty, and includes very few external ordinances. 
But in their natural meaning they go much further, and 
involve three principles, which evacuate and destroy the 
whole authority of the Word of God. They teach, first, 
that the Scriptures have no authority, and impose no ob¬ 
ligation, unless they have been indorsed and accepted by 
the individual conscience; and then only in that particular 
construction which each one puts upon them in his own 
mind. Secondly, that private, individual conscience is a 
supreme judge, whom, however faulty or imperfect his de¬ 
cisions may be, it is always a duty to obey. And thirdly, 
that in the present manhood of the world, whenever public 
opinion, or the prevailing impressions of educated men, and 
the apparent teaching of Scripture, diverge from each 
other, the voice of Scripture must be fitted to the inde¬ 
pendent conclusions of man’s natural conscience, and not 
the general conscience rectified, purified, and enlightened, 
by submission to the authority of the Word of God. 

I. The first main question which needs decision, is the 
nature and limit of the authority due to the Scriptures. 
Are they a revelation from God, which claims obedience 
and submission in virtue of its Divine origin? Or, are they 
simply a rich treasury of materials, which our conscience, 
the supreme law, may employ in forming its own conclu¬ 
sions, and which impose no obligation, till each particular 
person adopts and applies them in the exercise of his private 
judgment? On the answer to this inquiry it must depend 


* Essays and Reviews, pp. 31, 34, 44. 



THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 353 

whether the Church and the world are still under moral 
government; or, under the plea of magnifying the rights 
of conscience, we are given up to a state of spiritual an- 
archy, where no law is binding on any Christian, but just 
whatever he chooses to receive and obey. 

Let us first consider what are the express statements, on 
this subject, of the Scriptures themselves. We find, in the 
very front of our Lord’s teaching, the impressive sentence, 
u Think not that I am come to destroy the Law and the 
Prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For 
verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot 
or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be 
fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these 
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be 
called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever 
shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in 
the kingdom of heaven.” It seems plain that our Lord 
speaks here as the great Lawgiver. He denies that he has 
come to set aside the authority of commands already given. 
On the contrary, he had come to clear them from pernicious 
glosses, and to develop their full meaning. His purpose 
was not to abrogate, but to enlarge and complete the code 
of Divine morality; and those who taught the exemption of 
his disciples from even the secondary and inferior precepts, 
would lose all claim to spiritual eminence, and be called 
“least in the kingdom of heaven.” At the close of the 
discourse we have a renewed warning of the guilt and dan¬ 
ger of disobedience, and the most prominent feature in 
the whole sermon is declared to be its tone of Divine 
authority. 

If we pass from one of the earliest of our Lord’s dis¬ 
courses, to one of the last, the same feature stands out in 
clear relief, amid all the rich fullness of its grace and com¬ 
passion: “Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for 

30 


354 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

so I am.” “ I have given you an example, that ye shall do 
as I have done to you.” “If ye know these things, happy 
are ye if ye do them.” “If ye love me, keep my com¬ 
mandments.” “ He that hath my commandments, and keep- 
eth them, he it is that loveth me.” “He that lovetli me 
not, keepeth not my sayings.” “If a man love me, he will 
keep my words.” “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall 
abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s 
commandments, and abide in his love.” “This is my com¬ 
mandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” 

The lesson of the Epistles is precisely the same. More 
than three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans are com¬ 
posed of distinct apostolic commands, addressed with 
authority to the Roman Christians. The laws of the sec¬ 
ond table are all reimposed, with a Gospel commentary on 
their mutual relation, xiii, 8-14. The apostle declares, at 
the close, that the aim of his whole ministry was “to make 
the Gentiles obedient by word and deed)” and that the 
Gospel he preached was the commandment of God, and 
made known to the nations for the obedience of faith. In 
1 Cor. xiv, 37, we have the impressive caution—“If any 
man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him ac¬ 
knowledge that the things which I write unto you are the 
commandments of the Lord.” In the Second Epistle he 
tells them, “ To this end did I write, that I might know the 
proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things,” and 
he distinguishes in one case between simple advice and 
direct apostolic precept. 2 Cor. viii, 8-10. One-half of the 
Epistle to the Ephesians is made up of such precepts, 
given in the most direct and imperative form, while the 
fifth commandment is recognized as still binding on Chris¬ 
tians—“Honor thy father and mother, which is the first 
commandment with promise; that it may be well with 
thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” In the 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 355 

Epistle to the Pliilippians, the same truth is taught in plain 
terms, that Christian disciples were hound by the authority 
of apostolic commands: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye 
have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now 
much more in my absence, work out your own salvation 
with fear and trembling.” In every other epistle of St. 
Paul, the same truth appears. St. James is even more 
explicit, and says to the Christian believers, “Whosoever 
shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is 
guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, 
said also, Do not kill. Now, if thou commit no adultery, 
yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.” 
And, again, “Speak not evil one of another. He that 
speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, 
speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law; but if thou 
judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. 
There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy.” 
St. Peter fills his First Epistle with precepts of the most 
pointed and authoritative kind; while in his Second ho 
states the object of both his letters in these words: “That 
ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before 
by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the 
apostles of the Lord and Savior.” St. John’s Epistle 
abounds in declarations of the same kind: “ Hereby we do 
know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.” 
“I write no new commandment unto you, but an old com¬ 
mandment, which ye had from the beginning. Again a 
new commandment I write unto you.” “Whosoever com- 
mitteth sin, transgresseth also the law, for sin is the trans¬ 
gression of the law.” “Whatsoever we ask we receive of 
him, because we keep his commandments.” “This is his 
commandment, that we should believe on the name of his 
Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us 
commandment.” “This is the love of God, that we keep 


356 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


his commandments, and his commandments are not griev¬ 
ous.” “This is love, that we walk after his commandments.” 
In the last book of the canon, though mainly prophetic, 
this same truth enters into the repeated description of the 
faithful, that “they keep the commandments of God, and 
have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” 

Now, in all these passages, which are only specimens out 
of a large number, we are taught that every Christian is 
distinctly placed under the authority of God’s commands, 
given by Christ and his apostles, and recorded in the New 
Testament; and the duty of obedience is made to depend 
simply on the fact that such commands have been given. 
They can not be rightly obeyed, unless they are first under¬ 
stood, and their Divine authority recognized. But these 
are conditions of actual obedience, and not of the obliga¬ 
tion to obey. So far is this from being true, that neglect 
of the message is itself ranked among the most dangerous 
and deadly sins. 

This great truth, that the commands of Scripture are 
binding by their own authority as the words of God, and 
not simply when indorsed by the private conscience, results 
further from the distinct mention, in the Bible, of sins of 
ignorance, and of presumption. Now, if no command were 
obligatory on the Christian, but such as his own conscience 
has previously recognized, this distinction must be set aside. 
Sins. of ignorance would then be impossible, and all sins 
would be those of presumption, or committed with the pres¬ 
ent knowledge that they were sins. But this contradicts 
equally the Old Testament and the New. The law made 
distinct and full provision for the pardon of sins of ignorance, 
and of those alone. Num. xv, 22-31. The Psalmist offers 
the petition, “ Keep back thy servant from presumptuous 
sins, lest they get the dominion over me.” But it is only 
after the confession and prayer, “Who can understand his 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 357 

errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.” And the 
prayer of our Lord upon the cross, for his murderers, places 
the contrast in the clearest light: u Father, forgive them; 
for they know not what they do.” On the principle now 
examined, these sinners must have been guiltless, because 
their own conscience had never pronounced sentence against 
them for their great and aggravated crime. 

But this notion, that moral obligations depend simply on 
the impressions of the individual conscience, and not on the 
true relations between each person and his fellow-creatures, 
and the glorious Creator, is no less opposed to the lessons 
of a sound philosophy than to the plain and repeated state¬ 
ments of the Word of God. Moral commands are in their 
own nature as unchangeable as the being of God, the rela¬ 
tions of sovereignty and dominion, which he bears toward 
his intelligent creatures, and their own capacities for receiv¬ 
ing and imparting happiness. Add to these relations a 
power of choice, and nothing more is required to create 
moral obligation. The office of conscience is not to create 
new duties, but to discern those which do exist, and bring 
home to us their imperative claim on our obedience. The 
atheist is bound to love his Maker with all his heart and 
mind, no less really than the most devout Christian. The 
man steeped in selfishness, till he has come to reckon 
worldly prudence his sole duty, is bound to love his neigh¬ 
bor as himself, no less than a Howard or a Wilberforce, a 
St. Paul or a St. John. The most ignorant idolater, who 
bows down with sincere reverence to his idol, and says, 
“ Deliver me, for thou art my God,” is bound by the sec¬ 
ond commandment, no less than Moses, or Isaiah, or Dan¬ 
iel. £or the command is based on a Divine attribute, 
which is unchangeable, and not on the slippery and uncer¬ 
tain impressions or fancies of sinful men. No doctrine can 
be more dangerous to society than one which exempts from 


358 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the laws of the second table the disobedient child, the re¬ 
vengeful duelist, or assassin, the abandoned sensualist, the 
thief, and slanderer, whenever they have seared their own 
conscience, and lost the feeling of their own obligation. 
And none can be more fatal to true religion than one which 
pronounces atheism and idolatry to be blameless, whenever 
the fool has really said in his heart, “ There is no God 
or a deceived heart has turned the idolater aside, “ that he 
can not deliver his soul, or say, Is there not a lie in my 
right hand?” 

II. Again, is Conscience a supreme judge, invested with 
full powers, who legislates without any appeal but to him¬ 
self, and whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but can 
never be a duty to disobey ? Are the Scriptures.merely an 
exciting cause to awaken the independent 'voice of this 
judge, and must their teaching be accommodated to it, 
whenever they seem to diverge from each other ? 

The answer to this question is partly implied in the 
reply to the former. If the laws of God are of binding 
authority in their own right, then a ^mistaken conscience 
can never reverse the true law of duty. It may render 
acts relatively sinful which are lawful in - themselves, be¬ 
cause a person would thereby run counter to his own sense 
of what is right; but it can not make that lawful which in 
itself is wrong. The law of God does not prescribe me¬ 
chanical acts, irrespective of the temper and spirit in which 
they are done. “ He that doubteth is condemned, if he 
eat; because he doeth it not in faith; for whatsoever is 
not of faith is sin.” A diseased conscience introduces a 
moral discord, so that actions against the conscience, even 
when materially right, become morally wrong. But this, 
far from proving that conscience is a supreme judge with¬ 
out appeal, proves exactly the reverse. It shows the moral 
discernment of right and wrong to be so essential a part 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 359 

of the moral being that, when this is perverted, sin is in¬ 
evitable, whether we obey its lessons, or disobey them. 
Men can not render God a fit and acceptable service, when 
“ their own heart and conscience are defiled.” 

The true question is not, whether a mistaken conscience 
can render acts sinful to the individual which are lawful 
in themselves, but whether it can render actions lawful, 
which, apart from its erroneous decision, are morally wrong. 
Such a doctrine is a direct proclamation of moral anarchy. 
It strikes at the very foundation of the dominion of God. 

Let us test it, first, by one or two statements in the 
Scriptures themselves. Our Lord gave the warning to his 
disciples: “ The time will come when he that killeth you 
will think that he doeth God service.” Were these perse¬ 
cutors of the first disciples innocent, when they carried out 
their sincere convictions of duty by murdering the saints 
of God? If private conscience be a supreme judge, and 
without appeal, they were innocent. But the Scriptures 
pronounce them deeply criminal, and their voice is con¬ 
firmed by the deepest instincts of every Christian heart. 
Again, was Saul of Tarsus innocent when he “ verily 
thought with himself that he ought to do many things 
contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth?” Was his 
conduct blameless when he consented to the murder of 
Stephen, and held the raiment of them that slew him? 
Was he a pattern of moral uprightness when he “ made 
havoc of the Church, entering into every house, and haling 
men and women committed them to prison,” when he “pun¬ 
ished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to 
blaspheme?” What is his own sentence, when recovered to 
a sounder mind ? He declares himself, on account of these 
conscientious acts, to have been “ the chief of sinners.” 
He proclaims himself a marvelous example of the riches 
of God’s long-suffering, that the most guilty, in later ages, 


360 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


might not despair of the Divine mercy because of the 
greatness of their crimes. He alludes to the ignorance 
under which he then labored, but never dreams that it had 
power to turn his sins into virtues, and to free them from 
blame. Its only effect, in his view, was to avert a still 
deeper measure of guilt, so as to leave his case just within 
the extreme limit of Divine forbearance. “ Who before 
was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; but I 
obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief.” 
“ Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first 
Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering.” Nothing 
can be more decisive and clear than this judgment of the 
great apostle in the deliberate review of his own history. 
A perverted conscience ean not alter the nature of sin, and 
make it lawful. It merely frees it from that deeper aggra¬ 
vation, in which men sin presumptuously against the light, 
and their own convictions, and thus load themselves with 
a more dangerous and almost hopeless condemnation. 

The same conclusion results equally from a direct con¬ 
sideration of the nature of conscience. It may be allow¬ 
able, as a figure of rhetoric, to speak of it as a judge 
which holds its court within the soul, and pronounces its 
judgment on all the lower faculties'. But such metaphors, 
when constantly used, are liable to create a serious de¬ 
lusion. When it is said that conscience comes in between 
the Bible and ourselves, as a mediator and interpreter, the 
metaphor has been mistaken for a fact, and leads to dan¬ 
gerous consequences. For conscience is simply the mind 
itself, exercising its judgment on the moral relations of 
right and wrong in its own actions, and the actions of 
others. Its supremacy over other faculties is merely a 
varied expression for the truth, that the relation's the mind 
contemplates, when its acts receive this name, are in their 
own nature of binding authority, and claim allegiance arid 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 361 

submission. In its other actings, the mind contemplates 
things equal or inferior to itself, or superior beings, irre¬ 
spective of any claim to actual dominion and supremacy. 
But the laws of moral duty are royal laws in their own 
nature, and speak with the voice of a king; and the judg¬ 
ments of the mind, in which it recognizes them, partake of 
the same character. Thus the supremacy of conscience de¬ 
pends entirely on the distinctive nature of moral truth; 
but its defects, weakness, and error are due to the mind 
itself, and are one form of its moral guilt and infirmity. 
Its dictates are binding, therefore, so far as they are the 
true reflection of eternal truths, or of real moral relaiions 
perceived by the soul. But the mistakes of conscience 
have no more real authority than any other kind of error. 
They have this peculiar feature, that they make sin in¬ 
evitable. In obeying them the man sins against laws of 
God; and, in disobeying them, against his own convictions 
of duty, and the internal harmony of his own moral being. 

Conscience, then, is no mediator, which private judgment 
can interpose between the mind of the Christian and the 
Word of God, so as to shield him from the weight of the 
direct authority of the Scriptures. It is simply the mind 
itself, recognizing the control of moral obligations, whether 
dimly taught by the light of Nature, or more clearly by 
the voice of Divine revelation. If the Bible be the Word 
of God, then its moral precepts must be received by the 
conscience at once, so far as they are understood, and 
owned to be obligatory. If it be viewed as a human pro¬ 
duction, a double process will be required: first, to discover 
what it enjoins; and next, to discern how far its precepts 
are confirmed by the moral judgment, which may be formed 
on other grounds. In this case, natural conscience may be 
said to come between the soul and the Bible, because its 

revealed commands are not held to be binding of them- 
. 31 


362 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


selves, and require to be ratified by some further and more 
decisive authority. But this plainly involves an entire de¬ 
nial of its Divine character. On the other hand, when its 
authority is allowed, there can be no middle party re¬ 
quired, to render its precepts of direct and immediate ob¬ 
ligation. They bind, because they exist, and are the voice 
of God. They can be felt to be binding, and guide the 
practice, -only so far as their authority is accepted, and 
their true meaning is discerned. A personal conviction 
with regard to our own duty must accompany the acting 
of the mind upon the moral lessons in the Word of God: 
but it neither adds to their authority, nor creates the ob¬ 
ligation to obey; just as an image on the retina does not 
really intervene between the eye and the landscape, and is 
only a necessary result, from the optical structure of the 
eye, during the act of vision. 

III. A third question remains to be examined. Is it 
one feature of the present advanced age of the world, that 
whenever Scripture and private conscience appear to 
diverge, we must suit our construction of Scripture to the 
supposed lessons of conscience, instead of molding the con¬ 
science into submission to the truth of God? This is a 
very momentous inquiry. It has been affirmed that “ when 
conscience and the Bible appear to differ, the pious Chris¬ 
tian immediately concludes that he has not really under¬ 
stood the Bible.” In other words, his conscience may be 
assumed to be infallible, but his interpretation may be 
wrong, and the latter must be revised and varied till the 
discrepancy is removed. 

Now, such statements as these involve a double error. 
They assume that conscience, in the case of the pious 
Christian, can give decisions independent of the moral 
teaching of the Scriptures, and unaffected by it; and also, 
that its decisions are less fallible, and more trustworthy, 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 363 


than the conclusions drawn with regard to the true mean¬ 
ing of the Word of Gpd. 

First, it is untrue that the conscience of the pious Chris¬ 
tian can give decisive judgments, while he is still uncertain 
whether they agree with the Word t>f God, and even sus¬ 
pects some contradiction between them. For since he be¬ 
lieves that the Bible is a Divine revelation, he must believe 
that what God really commands in his Word is just, right, 
and true, and that moral judgments contradicting that 
Word must be deceptive and erroneous. An infidel, of 
course, may form moral judgments in entire independence 
of the Scriptures, and when they differ from his impression 
of the Bible precepts, he will at once impute the difference 
to the moral immaturity of the sacred writers. But with 
the Christian this is impossible. So long as he remains 
uncertain what the Scriptures really teach on a question of 
morals, so long the voice of conscience must remain in sus¬ 
pense, because he dare not pretend to set up his own 
guesses above the express revelations of the living God. 
The mere assertion, then, of the power and right of the 
natural conscience to form a fixed moral judgment on cases 
mentioned in the Scriptures, before the voice of Scripture 
itself has been heard, is a virtual rejection of Christianity. 
Such a claim is consistent and natural in the lips of the 
unbeliever alone. 

It is plain, however, that the natural conscience may form 
impressions on laws of moral duty, or the character of par¬ 
ticular actions, of a provisional kind, which diverge from 
the first impressions left on the mind by the teaching of 
Scripture, without any formal rejection of its authority. 
And the second question which arises must be, how these 
are to be reconciled together. Must our interpretation 
of Scripture always give way to the supposed voice of nat¬ 
ural conscience? Or must conscience always submit to the 


364 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

apparent meaning of Scripture? Or, again, must each, in 
turn, be modified and revised by the. help of the other? 

The true answer is here very evident to a thoughtful 
mind. Our interpretations of the Bible are liable to 
error, especially with regard to its indirect moral teach¬ 
ing, by examples, .jor in exceptional circumstances; and 
so also are the first impressions of natural conscience. The 
disciples needed their eyes to be opened, that they might 
understand the Scriptures; and they, whose heart and con¬ 
science are defiled, will be sure to form erroneous conclu¬ 
sions on moral right and wrong, till they have been cleansed 
and renewed by the Spirit of God. To claim infallibility 
for crude and hasty inferences from Scripture, so as to 
quench deep moral instincts of the soul, is the high road to 
all superstition. To set up natural conscience for an infal¬ 
lible rule, and either to reject the voice of Scripture, or 
violently to distort it, in order to get rid of a felt discord¬ 
ance from that rule, is the very essence of infidelity. The 
path of true wisdom lies between these extremes. It will 
use the plainer lessons of conscience to correct and remove 
gross and careless misconstructions of the lesson conveyed 
in isolated narratives of Scripture. But it will also use the 
voice of Scripture, especially when derived from the com¬ 
parison of many passages, to correct the superficial and 
erroneous teachings of natural conscience; and thus to raise 
it, from the low level of a spurious charity, a mere counter¬ 
feit of true benevolence, into communion with the Divine 
holiness, and the solemn, as well as the tender and gentle 
features of heavenly love. 

IV. Is there no difference, then, it may still be asked, 
between the liberty of the Christian and the rigor of the 
Jewish dispensation? Are we now, in the, times of the 
Gospel, no less under the dominion of an external law, than 
the disciples of Moses under the elder covenant? Are we 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 365 

not tauglit by the apostle, in most emphatic language, that 
Christians are “not under the law, but under grace?” Are 
we not charged to “stand fast in the liberty of Christ, and 
not to be entangled with a yoke of bondage?” Do not 
these and similar passages lend some countenance to the 
idea, that in former ages there were commands binding on 
the conscience, simply in virtue of their publication; but 
that now, under the Gospel, no command is of authority 
till received and digested by the conscience itself, as a kind 
of spiritual moderator, and thus engraven on the tablets 
of the heart? Perhaps the simplest and clearest reply to 
these questions will be found in a brief review of those 
foundations of Christian morality and Christian faith, on 
which their right solution must depend. 

First of all, moral truth is not a mutable and variable 
thing. It is no chance product of human opinion, no 
capricious and arbitrary creation of the Divine will. It is 
the reflection of God’s own moral perfection, in its relation 
to the responsible creatures he has made, and is thus un¬ 
changeable in its principles and grand outlines, like the 
attributes of the Most High. Moral perfection is in reality 
the Divine image retained in the spirit of angels, and re¬ 
stored in the souls of men. “God is love,” and the full 
resemblance of that love is the perfection of the rational 
creature, the great and supreme law of moral duty. But 
since all being is twofold, the Creator and his creatures, 
this law parts at once into two great commandments, the 
love of God and the Supreme Goodness, and the love of 
God’s creatures. It thus forms the double precept, in its 
wide and full meaning, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart,” and “ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself.” Each of these admits of further divisions, accord¬ 
ing to the attributes or states of the object loved, and the 
capacity or state of the moral agent himself. To dwell on 


366 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the second only—love to our fellow-creatures may assume 
three fundamental varieties. They may be viewed simply 
as creatures capable of happiness; and love to them under 
this character is simple benevolence, which extends even to 
lower forms of irrational life. They, may be viewed, next, 
as moral creatures, loving or selfish, holy or unholy. Love 
toward them in this second aspect assumes two opposite 
forms—the love of the good, and the hatred or abhorrence 
of the evil; and this constitutes moral righteousness or 
holiness. Again, sinful and unholy creatures may be viewed 
as still capable of moral recovery. Love to them, under 
this character, constitutes the last and highest element of 
true Christian morality, or that grace which is the dis¬ 
tinguishing lesson of the Gospel of Christ. Still further, 
the complex nature of man, as composed of body and 
soul, and his own condition, as a dying creature under 
moral probation, and a sinner encompassed by acts and 
messages of Divine grace, vary these fundamental out¬ 
lines, and multiply them into an immense diversity of moral 
obligations. 

Conscience is simply the mind itself, viewed in its capac¬ 
ity for discerning the truth and authority of these obliga¬ 
tions, and for passing judgment, by the aid of this knowl¬ 
edge, upon all the various actions of men. It is an 
enlightened conscience, when these relations are seen 
clearly, and felt in all their real power. It is a dark and 
ignorant conscience, when they are ill understood, and the 
mind seldom awakens to the sense of their surpassing and 
supreme importance. It is a perverse and defiled conscience, 
when the love of sin in the heart warps and falsifies the 
judgment, so that men call evil good, and good evil, put 
light for darkness and darkness for light, bitter for sweet 
and sweet for bitter. It is a seared conscience, when the 
soul becomes reckless and willfully desperate in sin, and 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 367 

refuses altogether to own the unchanging authority of the 
eternal laws of right and wrong. 

The conscience of man, since the fall, is darkened and 
defiled, but neither wholly seared and insensible, nor totally 
blind. His sense of his duty toward God is the most 
grievously obscured, and in a lower degree, but far less com¬ 
pletely, his sense of obligation toward his fellow-men. By 
the mere light of nature, in favorable circumstances, he 
attains some partial knowledge of the duties of truth, jus¬ 
tice, and benevolence. But, without teaching of revelation, 
all the higher lessons of moral obligation, the holiness of 
the law, and the grace of the Gospel, remain almost, or 
altogether unknown. 

Now, in using the higher help, and fuller teaching, which 
Divine revelation supplies, men are exposed, from a double 
cause, to the risk of serious error. Mere intellectual dull¬ 
ness, or haste and rashness, form one source of misin¬ 
terpretation; and moral disease and darkness are another, 
still more dangerous. Through dullness or haste, men may 
mistake beacons of warning for moral examples, or the ab¬ 
sence of express condemnation of wrong actions for a 
virtual approval; or the praise of mixed actions, because 
of some element of faith and piety, for a sanction to all the 
accessories of human infirmity and sin; or duties, resulting 
from rare and exceptional circumstances, may be taken for 
normal examples, given for general imitation. In all these 
cases a conscience, moderately enlightened, may serve to 
correct the too hasty inferences of a superficial judgment. 

But the other source of error is wider in its operation, 
and far more dangerous. The sinful heart shrinks from the 
holiness of the Divine law, and seeks by a natural instinct 
to elude its authority. The severity of God’s anger against 
sin grates painfully upon ears that are in love with worldly 
pleasure; and it is striven to set the truth aside, as a con- 


368 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


tradiction to the Divine benevolence. The laws of the first 
table, as most obnoxious to the fallen heart, are wholly re¬ 
jected, or robbed of all the fullness of their meaning; and 
those of the second table are pruned and lowered, till grace 
is turned into moral indifference, and holiness defamed as a 
Jewish superstition. All that remains is then a wretched 
caput mortuum of sickly, sentimental, unreal benevolence, 
degenerating by degrees into selfish prudence alone. Thus, 
instead of conscience being an infallible guide, to whose 
independent decisions our interpretations of Scripture must 
be compelled to bow, the exact reverse is true. The dis¬ 
eases and obliquities of conscience, in sinful men, are the 
most fruitful cause of laborious perversions of the Word of 
God. Men love darkness, rather than light, because their 
deeds are evil. They shrink, with instinctive shuddering, 
from the holy severity and stern authority of the Divine 
Law, and too readily corrupt and pervert the grace of the 
Gospel itself, by confounding it with the doctrine of indis¬ 
criminate mercy, and a message of universal impunity 
to sin. 

The authority, however, of the commands of God does 
not and can not depend on the unwilling submission of men. 
A diseased conscience may shrink from the light, and close 
the eyes against it. A sinful heart may send up thick 
vapors, like the smoke from the abyss, to obscure this 
upper firmament. But the stars abide in their everlasting 
courses, and never cease to shine, nor to rule over this 
night-season of moral darkness, till the full Dayspring 
shall arise. Whether known or unknown, whether obeyed 
or disobeyed, the great law of love, along with all the 
corollaries that flow from it, is always binding upon the 
souls of men. They can not, by any willful darkness, 
escape from its power. They can hide themselves in no 
cavern, where its presence does not overtake them, and 


THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 


369 


pronounce them guilty, so long as they refuse, or even 
neglect to obey. 

This law of duty, in its higher and nobler aspects, ap¬ 
plies to man simply as an immortal spirit, and requires the 
obedience of the h§art alone. But in its lower and more 
practical forms, it applies to man both in soul and body, 
and requires the obedience of the outward act, as well as 
in the affections of the heart. Under the earlier dispensa¬ 
tion of the Law, these outward requirements were greatly 
multiplied, and were needed to train and discipline the 
inner man to the free service "Of love. Out of the corrup¬ 
tion of this system arose the self-righteousness of the 
Pharisees, which worshiped the outward form, and stifled 
or denied the inner meaning of the Divine commands, and 
in which the weightier matters of the law—-judgment, 
mercy, and faith—were completely set aside. 

The contrast, then, of the Gospel of Christ with the Law 
of Moses does not consist in the abrogation of the Divine 
commands, or in making them dependent, for their au¬ 
thority, on the previous indorsement of man’s natural con¬ 
science. That would indeed be a fatal error, and pave the 
way for the great antichristian apostasy of the last days. 
In this nobler astronomy, the earth must revolve around 
the sun, not the sun around the earth. The conscience 
of man, a dependent and subordinate gift of the Creator, 
must submit to the firm and eternal laws of his moral 
government. It is a planet which derives all its light, 
and order, and beauty, not only from the enlightening 
beams, but from the controlling authority, of the Sun 
of Righteousness. Once let that control be withdrawn, 
and it becomes indeed a “wandering star,” which must 
travel further and further into the depths of error and 
delusion, till it loses itself in the outer darkness. Such 
was the state of those Jewish persecutors, in early days, of 


370 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


whom our Lord warned his disciples—“ The time will come, 
when he that killeth you will think he doeth God service.” 
Such was the state, in lat£r times, of those importers of 
ascetic superstition into the Church of Christ “ speaking 
lies in hypocrisy, seared in their own conscience as with a 
hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain 
from meats, which God hath created to be received with 
thanksgiving.” Such is the inspired description of those 
selfish apostates of the last days, who “walk after the flesh 
in theiiust of uncleanness, and despise government,” and 
“whose own heart and conscience are defiled” with the love 
and practice of sensual sin. It is only when the con¬ 
science bows with reverence and full submission to the au¬ 
thority of God’s written Word, that, like a planet obeying 
the central law of gravitation, it abides in the light which 
streams from Him whose word it obeys. It then receives 
and reflects the pure light of Divine truth, and its innu¬ 
merable applications to every field of moral duty, and to all 
the varied relations of human life, and the hills and valleys 
of earth are bathed with the brightness and the sunshine 
of heaven. 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 371 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 

The Bible combines witbin itself various characters. It 
is a sacred history, a code of religious doctrine and 
morality, and a message of peace and hope, or a proph¬ 
ecy, to successive generations, of a redemption to come. 
If truly inspired, it will bear, in every one of these char¬ 
acters, some impress of its Divine Author. It will be pure, 
for God is pure, and holy, for God is holy. It will be 
marked by historical unity, for “ known unto God are all 
his works from the beginning;” by doctrinal consistency, 
and fullness, for “ the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, even 
the deep things of Godby practical power over the 
hearts of men, for the Word of God is a word of power, 
and “ effectually worketh in them that believeby har¬ 
mony in its prophetic announcements, for its Author is 
that Spirit to whom all the secrets of the future are dis¬ 
closed, whose messages are of no private interpretation, but 
a consistent revelation of the good things to come. Let us 
examine the Bible, first, as a Sacred History, and see 
whether, in this aspect, it does not yield abundant evidence 
of its Divine authority and inspiration. 

The historical books of Scripture form three-fifths of the 
whole. They are composed by nearly twenty writers, in 
two different languages, during a space of more than fifteen 
hundred years. If merely the works of men, it would 
therefore be vain to expect in them any marked unity of 
plan, outline, and moral purpose, running through the 


372 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


whole. Such a unity, if it he found to exist, must evince 
the presence of a higher author, the Spirit of God. 

I. Now, first, the historical character of the Bible is in 
itself a mark of the Divine wisdom, by which it has been 
suited to its professed oflice, as a public revelation from 
God to man. By this alone it is widely distinguished from 
nearly every case of pretended revelation. Facts and im¬ 
posture do not agree together. There is no history, prop¬ 
erly so called, in the Koran; none in the Shasters and 
Vedas of Hinduism; none in the Zendavesta; none in the 
sacred books of Egypt, so far as they are recovered, or 
their contents are known. But the Bible is, first of all, a 
sacred history. It professes to be God’s own record of 
the leading facts in the course and progress of the moral 
government of our world through successive ages. It 
mounts upward to a period so remote, that no parallel 
testimonies exist, with which to compare it. But it reaches 
onward through all the later periods of ancient history; 
while it closes, in the first century of the Christian era, 
amid the fullest blaze of Greek and Homan civilization. 
Three-fifths of each Testament are purely historical. In 
either case the histories take precedence of all the other 
sacred books, and form the basis on which they rest, and 
out of which they evidently spring. 

This historical form of the message fulfills many im¬ 
portant objects. It is, in the first place, a convincing 
pledge for the reality of the whole. Men are prone, by 
nature, to flee from their Maker’s presence, and hide them¬ 
selves in the dark caverns of their own unbelief. Purely- 
doctrinal messages, or spiritual truths presented in an ab¬ 
stract form, would have little power to meet and overcome 
this great evil. Men need to be taught that the Almighty 
is a God nigh at hand, a real, living Governor, whose au¬ 
thority, like the blue sky, bends over all, and, whether 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OP THE BIBLE. 373 

they choose or refuse, embraces them continually on every 
side. 

A revelation, couched in a history of mankind from the 
creation downward, meets this temptation of the fallen 
heart, desirous to escape, if possible, from the sense of the 
Divine Presence. Men can not escape from the history of 
the Bible. Its facts encounter them on every side. If 
they go back to creation, the Bible is there, and if they 
trace out the dispersed families of mankind, the Bible is 
there also. If they take the wings of the morning, to visit 
the lands of the East; there, in the land of Egypt, or the 
plains of Chaldea, amid Arabian deserts, or the hills and 
valleys of Canaan, the ever-present hand of God, revealed in 
these histories, holds them in on every side. The obelisks 
of Nineveh are brought suddenly to light, after a burial of 
two thousand, five hundred years, and Bible facts are found 
engraven upon them. The monuments of Egypt are de¬ 
ciphered, and Shishak, So, Tirhakah, Necho, and Ilophra, 
all the Pharaohs whose names meet us in the Bible, meet 
us. there also, and dovetail at once into their places in the 
sacred history. In later times the remains of antiquity 
bring before us, in the coins of Herod the Great, and Herod 
Antipas, in the guild of dyers at Thyatira, the corn ships 
of Alexandria, the title of the Boman chief of Melita, and 
inscriptions by the “ temple-keeping Ephesians ” to the great 
Artemis, and her heaven-descended image, ever multiplying 
coincidences with the New Testament history. The plains 
east of Jordan are explored; and in Bashan, the Bible 
“land of giants,” after thousands of years, buildings worthy 
of a race of giants are brought to light once more. The 
voices from the half-deciphered tombs of the old Pharaohs, 
even though fulsome adulation, royal pride, and foul idola¬ 
try, have left on them a triple stamp of falsehood, seem still, 
in many parts, like dim and muffled echoes of the true say- 


874 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


ings of God. Their divergence from the Bible, where they 
seem to diverge the most, resembles the difference between 
the same landscape seen dimly through a sea of mist, and 
in clear sunlight. In proportion as we emerge out of ob¬ 
scure antiquity into a historical age, their harmony with 
the Bible becomes apparent. Where the divergence seems 
wide in the view of some investigators, amid the twilight 
of the world’s infancy, there are still such important points 
of agreement with Genesis and Exodus, as to force the sus¬ 
picion, even on the least religious minds, that, after all, the 
defect may belong to the blunders of interpreters, or to the 
falsehoods of pride and flattery in the heathen sculptures 
themselves, and leave the truth of the Bible unshaken and 
unimpaired. 

But there is a further benefit in the historical form of 
the Bible, besides the evidence which it forces, even on re¬ 
luctant hearts, of the reality of God’s moral government. 
The Divine message is brought into greater harmony witlv 
the weakness of mankind. 

The view has been lately advanced, that precept, ex¬ 
ample, and internal conscience, form three successive stages, 
both in the training of the individual and of the world. 
But the hypothesis, even apart from the conclusions which 
have been rested upon it, seems very questionable. Ex¬ 
ample comes even earlier, perhaps, than precept, in the 
real order of moral training. The child imitates out of 
mere instinct, even before it has learned to obey. It seems 
a truer description, that example is the means by which 
mere instinct is gradually transformed into conscious and in¬ 
telligent submission to moral law. Its influence is not by 
any means delayed till childhood is passing into youth. It 
begins with the first hours of infancy, and is then, perhaps, 
relatively the most powerful; though its absolute power 
may increase with the growth of thought and reason, and 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 375 

become still more conspicuous, when the years of childhood 
are passing away. Moral tales have a mighty power over 
children, long before a code of ethics would have any great 
influence. Even with the majority of educated men, biog¬ 
raphies and travels are more attractive, and do more in 
molding the heart, than didactic treatises of a moral kind. 

Now, the Bible, by the large proportion of direct nar¬ 
rative it contains, and the precedence of these historical 
books over the rest, is wisely adapted to this instinct of 
our nature. It deals with men, as truly children in the 
sight of God, who need training by examples and simple nar¬ 
ratives, before direct precepts can exercise their due power, 
or mysterious truths and doctrines be usefully revealed. 
The sacred histories form thus the larger portion of each 
Testament. They are the stem on which all the other 
parts depend. Plain, real fact, blossoming out into high 
and holy truth, is the character, throughout, of the Word 
of God. It stoops, first of all, by its narratives, to the 
condition of men, as dwelling in the outward world of time 
and sense, that it may raise them to the knowledge of their 
Maker, and the vision of unseen and eternal things. 

II. The unity of purpose, in all the sacred histories, is 
a further token of their Divine origin. The Bible is a 
history of redemption. It begins with a brief account of 
the Creation. But after its mention of the Temptation and 
the Fall, it announces the coming of a Bedeemer, who 
would subdue the deceiver and adversary of mankind. The 
expansion of this hope is the one object of all the later 
histories. They reveal the main steps of Divine Provi¬ 
dence, by which this first great promise was to be at length 
fulfilled. Amid the rank and luxurious growth of lust and 
violence, of unbelief and idolatry, truth and righteousness 
are kept alive in the earth by ceaseless acts of Divine 
power and wisdom; till at length the Seed of the Woman 


376 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

is born, and a new and brighter era of Gospel hope dawns 
upon the benighted nations, which had long been sitting in 
darkness, and the shadow of death. 

All the main features of the Bible history are simply 
explained by a reference to this great object of the whole 
message. It determines what is said, and what is left 
in silence; what is briefly touched upon, and what is 
unfolded more at large. A few chapters are the sole 
record of two thousand years from Adam to Abraham. 
The work of redemption was then in its first infancy. 
The Spirit of God, like the dove when it first returned to 
the ark of Noah, seems to flee away from those ages of 
dim light and abounding wickedness; and to await, in _ 
silence and hope, the abating of the floods of ungodliness, 
and the arrival of brighter days. 

With the call of Abraham a new era in the scheme 
of Divine mercy plainly began. Here, also, the history 
evidently begins to expand, and becomes far more copious. 
Still, it passes by in silence the rise of idolatrous empires, 
and confines its narrative, almost entirely, to the lives 
of the three chosen patriarchs, whose names were to be 
linked inseparably, through all later ages, with the name 
of the true and only God. Two hundred years from the 
death of Jacob to the Exodus, are dismissed in three chap¬ 
ters only. But with the Exodus itself began a fresh stage 
of Divine revelation, and two whole books, mainly histor¬ 
ical, are occupied with the great subject, accompanied by 
two others, filled with the Divine laws, which were given 
to the people of Israel. Another whole book is given 
to the narrative of the Conquest, the historical basis of 
the Jewish polity for fifteen hundred years, and itself 
the type of a greater deliverance. But three centuries 
that follow, in which there was no fresh revelation, are 
compressed into a single book, with one short episode in 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 377 


the history of Ruth. The line of inspired prophets began 
with Samuel, and that of kings with Saul and David; and 
the history expands once more, and is on a larger scale. 
It attains its greatest fullness in the reign of David, the 
center of a new era of Divine promise; and then contracts 
into a more rapid sketch of the later reigns. Three short 
hooks, after the Captivity, are marked by the entire absence 
of miracles, by the continuation of the history of Judah 
alone, by a remarkable preservation of the chosen people, 
and by a definite prediction of the time when Messiah 
would appear. The history is then suspended, till the time 
of the Incarnation. It resumes with a short account of 
our Lord’s infancy, and a fuller record of his public minis¬ 
try, death, and resurrection, by four different witnesses. 
One of these continues his earlier narrative of our Lord’s 
lifetime by a history of the early Church, till the Gospel 
is firmly planted by St. Paul himself in the metropolis of 
the heathen world. 

Now, in all these histories one great purpose is conspicu¬ 
ous. Hope in a Savior still to come is the leading feature 
of the Old Testament; and faith in a Savior who has act¬ 
ually appeared is the animating principle of the New. 
Facts are omitted, which have only a remote bearing on 
this great hope of the Church; and those are unfolded 
most fully into - which it enters with the greatest clearness. 
The Bible history, from first to last, is instinct with life 
and hope. Every-where it reveals the Spirit of God, brood¬ 
ing over the dark and troubled waters of a sinful world, 
and preparing the way for a great and blessed regeneration 
still to come. 

III. Continuity of outline is another main feature of the 
Bible history. It does not resemble, in the least, the in¬ 
dependent workmanship of twenty writers, the earliest sep¬ 
arated from the latest by fifteen hundred years. It -wears 

32 


878 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the marks of one continued narrative, carried on uniformly 
through four thousand years, from the days of Paradise to 
the preaching of St. Paul to the Jews at Rome, with one 
single break, where the Law and the Prophets are parted 
from the higher message of the Gospel of Christ. 

This continuity is seen in the whole series of the Old 
Testament histories. The Book of Genesis reaches from 
the Creation, in one unbroken descent, to the death of 
Joseph. Exodus begins with the death of Joseph and his 
brethren, and carries us through the deliverance itself, till 
the tabernacle is finished, at the opening of the second 
year, and filled with the cloud of glory. Numbers resumes 
from the same time, or rather earlier, before the second 
Passover, and readies to the conquest of the land on the 
east of Jordan. Deuteronomy, besides a review of the 
journeys in the wilderness, closes with an account of the 
death of Moses. The Book of Joshua reaches from the 
death of Moses to that of Joshua and of Eleazar. The 
Book of Judges resumes with some details of the conquest, 
and reaches to the death of Samson, after the long strife 
with the Philistines had begun. The First Book of Samuel 
begins with the birth of the prophet, in the days of Sam¬ 
son, and extends through the reign of Saul to his over¬ 
throw and death. The Second begins with the accession 
of David, and reaches nearly to the close of his reign. 
The two Books of Kings continue the history, in unbroken 
order, to the Fall of the Temple. Three short books re¬ 
count the restoration after the Captivity. The Books of 
Chronicles contain simply genealogies from Adam to David, 
and a fuller narrative of the reigns of the kings of Judah 
only, from David to Zedekiah. The New Testament re¬ 
sumes the history, after a pause of four centuries, and con¬ 
tinues it from the Incarnation, till the Gospel was planted in 
Rome, the great center and metropolis of the heathen world. 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 379 


A series of histories, so continuous through four thou¬ 
sand years, from the Creation to Nero, could not be the 
chance work of twenty writers, fifteen centuries removed at 
the two extremes. A higher wisdom must surely have 
been present, and molded every portion into harmony with 
the common design of the whole. The single break be¬ 
tween Malachi and the Incarnation only strengthens the 
proof of design. Stars wane before the sunrise. The gift 
of prophecy was suspended, and sacred history was with¬ 
held for a season, before that dawn of the Sun of Righteous¬ 
ness, after which both of them were to reappear in richer 
splendor and beauty than before. The words of the 
heathen poet, in reference to the works of creation, must 
apply here with equal force, “ Mens agitat molem , et magno 
se corpore miscet .” One mind, the mind of the Holy Spirit, 
must have brooded over this wide range of history, evolv¬ 
ing deep harmonies of truth and wisdom out of the seem¬ 
ing chaos of confusion and spiritual darkness, through the 
long and weary course of these four thousand years. 

IV. Simplicity of style is another feature of the sacred 
histories by which they are distinguished from common 
narratives. There is no comment, and no rhetorical ampli¬ 
fication. Where genealogies are given, there is no attempt 
to relieve their barrenness by digressions and arts of com¬ 
position. The most startling miracles are mentioned in the 
same quiet tone as the most commonplace occurrence. The 
writer seldom pauses, even for a moment, to direct the at¬ 
tention of his readers to the wonders he has to record. A 
calm, quiet, solemn, earnest tone marks the whole narra¬ 
tive. The writers never turn aside to deprecate suspicion, 
never pause to amplify what is marvelous, and seldom 
allude for a moment to collateral testimony. However 
rich in materials for reflection their narrative may be, they 
abstain from all moral commentary. The history is left to 


880 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


supply its own key. There is no condemnation of Lot, in 
his ready acceptance of Abraham’s offer, hut the results of 
his choice, too selfishly made, speak for themselves. There 
is no direct censure of Jacob’s deceit in the case of the 
blessing, but his whole life is one tale of silent retribution. 
He is deceived, in turn, in all that is dearest, with refer¬ 
ence to his flocks, to his wife, to his best-beloved son. 
Thus the histories of the Bible, while they are simple be¬ 
yond all others, are also the most profound. The youngest 
child reads them with lively interest; and the most ex¬ 
perienced Christian, the moralist, and the divine, return to 
them continually, and find them - rich with unsuspected 
treasures of moral truth and heavenly wisdom. 

What can be more simple than the history of Joseph? 
Its truth and pathos fipd their way irresistibly to every 
heart. But what can be more profound than the lessons it 
conveys, on the laws <5f duty, the ways of Divine Provi¬ 
dence, and the character and work of the promised Be- 
deemer? It follows abruptly after a dry, unadorned gene¬ 
alogy of the sons of Esau, and is closed by a list, almost 
equally dry in appearance, of the sons and grandsons of 
Jacob. It bursts upon us at once with the completeness 
of a perfect drama, where every part conspires, simply and 
naturally, to the issue designed from the first. The dreams 
of Joseph are fulfilled through the envy of his brethren, in 
spite of their settled purpose to falsify them; and the deep 
reality of human character and feeling, in every step of 
the narrative, renders doubly conspicuous the unfailing 
truth of G-od’s promises, and the sureness of his counsel, 
who sees the end from the beginning. Amid the darkness 
of heathenism, and the sinful perverseness of the chosen 
seed, there dawns a bright earnest of the promised re¬ 
demption ; and the Christian, who compares it with the 
New Testament, is compelled to feel, in all the main 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 381 


steps of the narrative—Behold, a greater than Joseph is 
here! 

This simplicity of the Bible history is one out of many 
marks which strongly attest its Divine inspiration. We 
feel, even when we are not able to explain, the stamp of 
Divinity which rests upon it. Skeptical critics may strive 
to persuade themselves, or their readers, that the early nar¬ 
ratives of the Bible are epic poems or mere legends. We 
read them once more, and the illusion disappears. In every 
sentence we hear the tones of truth and reality. The im¬ 
pression they leave on the mind, and have left on every 
candid and thoughtful reader since the hour when they 
were written, is like that made on our senses, when we 
gaze on the blue vault of heaven. They are inimitably 
simple, and still they are unfathomably profound. 

Y. The condensation of the Bible histories is not less 
striking than their simplicity. This was required, indeed, 
by the practical object for which they are given. A history 
of the world through four thousand years, in which the 
main steps of Gold’s moral government should be recorded 
for the lasting guidance of his people, required the utmost 
condensation, or it would fail to be accessible to the vast 
majority of believers. The structure of the Bible fulfills 
this necessary condition in the highest degree. It is full, 
every-where, of the seeds of things. Its minutest incidents, 
on close examination, are found to be rich with a large 
variety of spiritual truth. They are like the images on the 
human retina; and every speck contains, in miniature, a 
condensed landscape of heavenly wisdom. 

This condensation of the Bible narratives is doubly 
striking, if we compare them with the earliest heathen 
records, the lately-deciphered monuments of Egypt. Let 
us hear the description of these, which Baron Bunsen has 
given, who still regarded them as a lever which must over- 


382 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


turn our faith in the truthfulness of the early histories of 
the Bible. “ Where,” he asks, “ is there an instance of so 
many and such magnificent monuments, which sometimes 
tell us little, frequently nothing at all ? . . . The written 
character is prolix; the repetition of fixed phrases makes 
it still more so. Little is lost by occasional lacunce, but 
comparatively little advance is made by what is preserved. 
There are few words in a line; and what is still worse, 
little is said in a great many lines. Inscriptions on public 
buildings were not intended to convey historical informa¬ 
tion. They consist of panegyrics on the king, and praises 
of the gods, to each of whom all imaginable titles of honor 
are given. Historical facts are thrown into the shade, as 
something paltry, casual, incidental, by the side of such 
pompous phraseology as—Lords of the World, Conquerors of 
the North, Tamers of the South, Destroyers of all the Un¬ 
clean, and all their Enemies. The case of the papyri is 
certainly different. But written history, such as the his¬ 
torical books of the Old Testament, so far as our knowl¬ 
edge of their writings goes, was certainly unknown to the 
old Egyptians.” 

The early books of the Bible are a total contrast, in this 
respect, to the previous description of the most ancient 
heathen records. The object seems to be, in every part, to 
condense into a small compass the largest possible amount 
of real information. Simple facts, condensed and multi¬ 
plied, seem here to constitute the basis on which the whole 
superstructure of moral, prophetic, and doctrinal messages 
was to be reared. And this feature which marks the ear¬ 
liest Bible histories, remains equally striking to their close. 
The Book of Acts stands preeminent above all classic his¬ 
tories, for the variety, the condensation, and the fullness of 
its narrative. It links itself with the whole range of the 
Old Testament Scripture, with all the facts of the Gospels, 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 383 

the cotemporary messages of the Epistles, and an immense 
variety of the facts of classical antiquity; while it records 
the successive steps by which the Gospel was transferred 
from Jerusalem to Rome, and the way prepared for long 
ages of Gentile privilege, and Jewish desolation. 

YI. The Pentateuch, or the Law of Moses, forms the 
first of four main divisions of the Bible history. Its his¬ 
torical unity is a most conspicuous feature of the whole. 
Instead of permitting us to resolve it, as some modern 
skeptics have labored to do, into a clumsy and imperfect 
patchwork of three or four different authors, it requires us 
to see in it the work of a higher mind, and a deeper 
wisdom than even that of Moses, by which the course of 
the whole narrative must have been secretly and powerfully 
controlled. 

First of all, in its general character it stands alone, and 
has no counterpart in any human production whatever. It 
is a code of national law, inwrought into the texture of a 
regular history. Again, it is a history of mankind from 
the earliest times, briefly and comprehensively given, and 
blossoming into lessons of moral duty, and institutes of 
national wisdom. It roots itself in the soil by innumerable 
details, in its earlier portion; and rises, at its close, into a 
most earnest and impressive series of Divine commands and 
exhortations. Thus it stoops to man, as to a little child, 
takes him by the hand, teaches him to look upward, and 
leads his footsteps, gently, along the steep hill-side of 
eternal truth. Through a simple record of facts it rises 
gradually into the region of moral duty, of precepts, doc¬ 
trines, and promises. It begins with the loss of Paradise 
through man’s transgression; and ends with a description 
of God’s own prophet, from the hight of Pisgah, looking 
out upon a glorious vision of an inheritance, like Paradise, 
still to come. 


384 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


This double character, of facts passing into doctrine, 
command, and promise, runs through the whole Pentateuch, 
but with a manifest progress and t gradation. The first 
book is almost wholly historical, since it ends before Moses, 
the great prophet and lawgiver, was born. But it is not 
mere history. Its leading facts are made the basis of dis¬ 
tinct commands and ordinances, which form essential parts 
of the law of the Lord. The history of the Creation, iu 
the first chapter, is closed by the Institution of the Sab¬ 
bath, the first, in order, of all the revealed comjnands of 
God; and its repetition, with details, in the second chapter, 
closes with the law of marriage, the “grand basis of all 
social and domestic obligations. The third chapter, again, 
closes with a double appointment of human labor and con¬ 
jugal obedience. The fourth chapter implies the institu¬ 
tion of animal sacrifice. The ninth puts a seal upon the 
sacredness of man’s life, by a public appointment of death 
to be the penalty of murder. The rite of circumcision is 
enjoined to Abraham by a distinct covenant, while a law 
of tithes, and another ceremonial observance, are indirectly 
imposed, in the later course of the patriarchal history, on 
the people of Israel. 

The laws, however, in Genesis, though of high import¬ 
ance, are comparatively few in number. In Exodus they 
form rather less than one half of the whole book. In Le¬ 
viticus there is only a very slight intermixture of narrative: 
it consists almost entirely of the ordinances of the taber¬ 
nacle worship, and of other national institutes. The first 
and last chapters of Numbers have the same character, but 
the middle is chiefly historical. Deuteronomy, on the other 
hand, is mainly a rehearsal and repetition of Divine laws; 
but its first chapters are a review of the history in the wil¬ 
derness, and it closes with an account of the parting words, 
and of the death of Moses. There is thus a plain organic 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OP THE BIBLE. 385 


unity from first to last. The two elements of facts and laws 
are present throughout the Pentateuch: hut the facts, in 
Genesis, are the main substance of the work, with only a 
few laws interposed; while Deuteronomy is a book of laws 
and Divine ordinances; but it is firmly anchored, both at 
its opening and its close, upon the great series of events 
which compose the sacred history. 

Again, the Book of Genesis, in its first chapters, must 
either be a supernatural revelation, or a mere legendary 
fiction. But every feature of legendary composition is here 
precisely reversed. There is no trace of a desire to amplify 
doubtful and marvelous narratives, because the account goes 
back to the most distant ages, the birthday of the world. 
On the contrary, one short chapter alone is given to a gen¬ 
eral history of the Creation, a second to the state of man 
before the fall, a third to the fall itself, a fourth to the first 
example of God’s moral government over a world of sin¬ 
ners, a fifth to the genealogy of sixteen hundred years, 
from Adam to Noah; and three others to the Flood, where 
a new covenant of grace began. Three chapters more com¬ 
plete the whole account to the call of Abraham; so that 
eight chapters travel rapidly over more than two thousand 
years. 

With the call of Abraham a new dispensation of mercy 
began. Here, therefore, the history expands at once into 
larger proportions. Forty chapters unfold rather less than 
three centuries of the patriarchal history. A further ex¬ 
pansion ensues at once after the call of Moses, and fifty 
historical chapters are occupied with an interval of forty 
years only, till his death. There is thus an evident har¬ 
mony and proportion of historical development in the whole 
Pentateuch, which severs it widely from all the heathen 
legends; and is a clear sign that it “ came not by the will 

of man,” but that Moses composed it v under the guidance 

33 


386 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of a higher wisdom, and “ spake as he was moved by the 
Holy Ghost.” 

Let us contrast it, for example, with Manetho and the 
Egyptian monuments. The history of that famous- Egyp¬ 
tian priest has perished, except two or three short frag¬ 
ments in Josephus. But we learn, from an extract in 
Eusebius, that it professed to begin with reigns of the 
gods, occupying 13,900 years, and four dynasties of Manes, 
or souls of the dead, and Heroes, who reigned over Egypt 
for 11,000 years more, and were followed by Menes, the 
first mortal or human king. All these are described as 
Egyptian reigns. They were designed evidently to flatter 
the national vanity and pride. There is no trace of any 
message in the history, to remind the Egyptians of their 
brotherhood with the foreign races they were accustomed 
to hate or despise. What a total contrast to the simple 
record in the first chapter of Genesis! The very first les¬ 
son taught to the Jews in their national law, the immedi¬ 
ate gift of the God of Israel, was their brotherhood with 
the whole race of mankind; with whom they shared, in 
Adam, a common sentence of guilt and shame; and, both 
in Adam and Noah, a common message of hope and com¬ 
ing redemption. 

The historical interweaving of the whole narrative is 
another feature, which shows the Divine wisdom by which 
it was framed. Every device of skepticism is baffled when 
it strives to rend asunder the seamless robe of this funda- 
mental record of patriarchal history. In the latter half of 
Genesis, for example, from the birth of Isaac onward, we 
find not less than a hundred retrospective allusions to the 
previous portion of the narrative, and most of them of a 
distinct and specific kind. Some are direct, others indirect 
and comparatively latent. Some refer to a single passage, 
and others to the combined result of several statements. 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 387 

The same character of retrospective allusion runs through 
the four later books, and compacts the whole Pentateuch 
so firmly together, that no critical artifice can succeed in 
parting it asunder. It would need little more, to disprove 
every variety of the document hypothesis, than to print 
separately the different alleged documents; when it would 
be seen at once that they were merely torn and broken 
fragments of the Pentateuch, and could have no claim to 
form a complete and independent whole. The firmness of 
structure, in these early books of Scripture, is like that 
which the skillful architect gives to the lowest courses of 
the lighthouse, which has to resist the incessant surging of 
the waves of the ocean, and to bear aloft, on its summit, 
the beacon-light, by which ten thousand mariners may be 
rescued from fatal shipwreck, and find it a star of hope and 
peace amidst the darkness and the storm. 

VII. In the later books of the Old Testament, from 
Joshua to Nehemiah, the historical unity, though rather 
less conspicuous than in the Pentateuch, is not less real. 
The diversity of the writers, and the interval of more than 
a thousand years from the first to the last, make this fea¬ 
ture, in some respects, even more striking than in the books 
of Moses, and compels us to read in it the result of a 
higher wisdom. 

The Book of Joshua is a history of the conquest, the 
fulfillment of the prophecies in the law, and the basis of 
all the later history of the chosen people. It contains 
every thing essential to such a record, and nothing super¬ 
fluous. First, we have the passage of Jordan, and the re¬ 
newal of the national covenant. This is followed by four 
main steps in the Conquest, the fall of Jericho and of Ai, 
and the defeat of a great southern and a great northern 
confederacy of the Canaanites. There is, next, a formal 
catalogue of the kings and districts that were subdued. 


888 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


The record of the Conquest is followed by the division of 
the land. And first, there is a repeated summary of the 
allotment by Moses to the trans-Jordanic tribes. Then we 
have the fulfillment of the promise to Caleb, and the allot¬ 
ments to the two leading tribes of Judah and Joseph. 
Next follows the supplementary allotment to the seven re¬ 
maining tribes, with a list of the towns and villages in each 
portion, closed by Joshua’s own private inheritance. The 
ecclesiastical arrangements follow, the appointment of the 
cities of refuge, and those of the Levites. The eastern 
tribes are then dismissed to their inheritance beyond Jor¬ 
dan. Last of all, Joshua, before his death, solemnly re¬ 
counts to the people the mercies of God, and twice renews 
with them the national covenant. 

The last chapter illustrates, in a striking manner, the 
way in which the whole series of sacred history is bound 
together. It goes back, in its review of the past, to the 
‘days of Terah, the father of Abraham, and mentions his 
idolatry, which is only implied in Genesis, in the land of 
Chaldea. It mentions next, in succession, the call of Abra¬ 
ham, the birth of Isaac, and of the sons of Isaac, Esau and 
Jacob, the inheritance of Esau in Mount Seir, and the de¬ 
scent of Jacob and his sons into Egypt, forming a brief 
summary of four-fifths of the Book of Genesis. In three 
verses more it gives an abridgment of Exodus, and in the 
last clause, of the Book of Numbers. In the eighth verse 
we-have a brief repetition of the twenty-first of Numbers, 
and in verses 9, 10, of the striking episode of Balak and 
Balaam. Three other verses describe the Conquest itself, 
and the fulfillment of the promises in Deuteronomy. The 
mention of the oak or pillar, and of the sanctuary in She- 
chem, refers us to the history, in Gen. xxxiii, of Jacob’s 
purchase from the Shechemites; the burial of Joshua, to 
the previous mention of his inheritance in the middle of 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 389 


the hook; and that of the hones of Joseph, to three pas¬ 
sages in Genesis and Exodus—Gen. xxxiii, 18-20, 24-26; 
Exod. xiii, 19—so as to bind together, by these retrospect¬ 
ive allusions, the whole series of the sacred history. 

The Book of Judges, which reaches from the death of 
Joshua to the Book of Samuel, when a new era of the The¬ 
ocracy began, has a distinct unity of its own. The suc¬ 
cessive relapses into idolatry, and the captivities to the 
heathen, showed the need of a righteous king, and that 
the true rest was not yet come. The book begins with a 
review of those failures in obedience to the Divine com¬ 
mands, which contained the seeds of later degeneracy and 
rebellion. Then follows a general summary of the whole 
period, in its double aspect of repeated apostasy and re¬ 
newed help and deliverance. These periods are then briefly 
recorded in the order of time, from the first captivity under 
a king of Mesopotamia to the partial deliverance wrought 
by Samson at his death. The history then reverts to two 
main illustrations of the national sins of Israel in the next 
generation after Joshua and the elders, and closes them 
with a remark which contains the intended moral of the 
whole history, and made it a virtual prophecy of the na¬ 
tional revolution which was soon to follow—“ In those days 
there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was 
right in his own eyes.” 

The First and Second Books of Samuel have a similar 
unity oi**design. They contain the steps of the great tran¬ 
sition from the earlier form of theocracy, under judges, to 
the permanent choice and establishment of the royal line 
of David. The former contains the successive steps, by 
which their judicial honor was taken from Eli and his 
priestly house, and transferred, first to Samuel, then to Saul, 
and finally to David, the center of a new era of promise and 
blessing. The Second Book is occupied with the forty years 


390 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of his reign, just as that of Numbers with the forty years in 
the wilderness. The kingdom was settled by covenant in 
David’s line: the ark, which the sin of Eli’s sons had be¬ 
trayed to the Philistines, was brought to Jerusalem; and 
preparation was made, on the site where the pestilence was 
arrested, for building the temple of God. 

The Books of Kings continue the history through the 
reign of Solomon, and the division of the two kingdoms, 
down to the reign of Zedekiah, and the Fall of the Temple. 
In their opening chapters we have the building of the 
Temple, and the reign of Solomon, when the queen of the 
South came from the ends of the earth to hear his wisdom. 
The Theocracy, or typical kingdom of God, then reached 
its climax of strength and beauty, and began quickly to 
reveal its imperfection, and hasten into decay. The rest of 
these books contains the history of the schism, which rent 
Israel from Judah, and continued till the ten tribes were 
led away captive to Assyria, and Judah to Babylon. There 
is a clear unity of style in this portion of the history. - It 
is also the stem which supports the greater part of the 
prophecies of the Old Testament. Three of the greater 
and nine of the minor prophets belong to this period. To 
make the connection still more intimate, three chapters of the 
Second Book of Kings are repeated, with very slight change, 
in the midst of Isaiah’s prophecies, and two others are re¬ 
peated in the book of Jeremiah’s prophecies, at its very close. 

The history is continued still further, in a second series, 
on the return from the Captivity. The Books of Chron¬ 
icles begin from the Creation, and reach to the Captivity 
of Babylon. They are then continued by the Books of 
Ezra and Nehemiah, the last two verses of Chronicles and 
the first two of Ezra being the same. The nine chapters 
of genealogy from Adam to David, though they contain no 
history, supply copious materials to confirm the Mosaic 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 391 


narrative, and the actual truth of the later records. The 
remainder of the First Book gives fuller details than the 
Books of Samuel with regard to the last years of David, 
and the whole priestly economy. The Second Book con¬ 
fines itself, almost entirely, to the kingdom of Judah. In 
the first and leading series of sacred history, the prominent 
feature is the course of national sin, by which the kingdom 
of David sunk into ruin. But in Chronicles the main sub¬ 
ject is the mercy of God to the people of Israel, and to 
the chosen line of David, issuing at length in that decree of 
Cyrus, by which the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah 
were fulfilled. 

The three short Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 
which continue this supplementary history, and bring it 
down through a whole century after the Return, have a 
character of their own. The grandeur of the old covenant 
has ceased. It has decayed, and grown old, and is ready 
to vanish away. No miracle is recorded in this last period 
of the sacred history. The unfinished air of the Books of 
Ezra and Nehemiah must strike every thoughtful reader. 
They are a little promontory, jutting out from the earlier 
times of the Law and the Prophets, and nearly severed from 
them by the Captivity—where hope might plant its foot 
more firmly, and look forward, across generations of delay, 
to the promised coming of Messiah. The prophetic books, 
which belong to the same period, contain some of the 
clearest predictions of his Advent. Side by side with Ezra 
and Nehemiah, as if to show that their unfinished charac¬ 
ter is the result of design, we have a history, in the Book 
of Esther, which has never been surpassed, in dramatic 
unity and power, by any fiction which human fancy has 
devised. It has a marked resemblance of character to the 
history of Joseph at the close of the Book of Genesis. In 
each of them the inspired narrative rises into a sacred 


392 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


drama, complete and harmonious in every part, of which 
the main purpose is the deliverance and preservation of the 
chosen people. In the Book of Nehemiah, again, we have 
a summary of the whole course of Jewish history through 
fifteen hundred years, from the call of Abraham to the 
time when the covenant was renewed after the return from 
captivity. Thus, in two cotemporary books, wholly oppo¬ 
site in character, and in two opposite ways, a signal unity 
is impressed on the whole series of Old Testament histories, 
from the times of Abraham ajid Joseph, and the old 
Pharaohs, to those of Nehemiah, Esther, and Mordecai, 
under the Persian kings. 

The break in the history, after Nehemiah, only completes 
the proof of this all-pervading unity of design. The wan¬ 
ing of the elder dispensation, and the withdrawal, through 
four hundred years, of sacred history and prophecy, was 
adapted, in the highest degree, to render the dawn of the 
Gospel more impressive. 

VIII. The four Gospels are the next main division of 
the sacred history. And here the marks of Divine wisdom 
are still more conspicuous than in the narratives of the 
Old Testament. 

The life, death, and resurrection of our Lord, are the 
central object of Old Testament prophecy, the sum and 
substance of the Christian faith. The great end for which 
all written revelation is given required that these should be 
placed in clear and full relief. Here, therefore, and here 
only, in the whole range of inspired messages, we have 
four parallel and collateral histories. In the Old Testa¬ 
ment two is the highest number of such parallel series, or 
a bare sufficiency under that rule of the law—“ In the 
mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be es¬ 
tablished.” But here, in the Gospels, the legal provision 
is exceeded. Four testimonies have been provided, and 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 


393 


not two or three only; so that they fulfill the description 
of our Lord, and give to us “good measure, pressed down, 
shaken together, and running over.” 

But the same rule of the Law, when compared with the 
Gospels, yields a further sign of the deep wisdom which 
presided secretly in their composition. Two witnesses are 
barely sufficient, but three are ample, for confirmation 
alone. When a first record, then, has been made, and one 
testimony given, a second would naturally have, for its 
chief purpose, to confirm, and not to amplify and extend 
it. A third would be less needful, though still desirable, 
for mere confirmation of the others, and might reasonably 
be expected to ratify and to supplement their statements, 
almost in equal measure. A fourth, if given at all, plainly 
exceeds the limit named in the Law. Its main object, we 
may infer, would be to supplement and enlarge the pre¬ 
vious narratives, since it would be almost superfluous for 
mere confirmation of them alone. 

Now, if we take the Gospels in the order in which they 
now stand, and in which they have been placed from the 
first, such is precisely the relation which exists between 
them. St. Mark, the second, has only two or three inci¬ 
dents not recorded by St. Matthew, though the different 
arrangement in one large portion, and the far greater full¬ 
ness of the details, preserve it from all suspicion of being a 
mere summary. Its aim, throughout, is to confirm St. 
Matthew, and not to supply facts wholly new. The Gospel 
of St. Luke combines both objects in almost an equal pro¬ 
portion. In the account of our Lord’s infancy, it supple¬ 
ments the narrative of St. Matthew, and hardly one inci¬ 
dent is the same. In seven chapters that follow, it con¬ 
firms the evidence of its two predecessors, and agrees fur¬ 
ther with St. Mark in the arrangement. Ten chapters 
after these are mainly a supplement to the previous narra- 


394 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

tives; six others are in the main confirmatory, and the last 
chapter, again, is supplementary, and consists mainly of 
new matter. The Gospel of St. John, on the contrary, is 
supplementary from first to last. Except in the account 
of the miracle of the loaves, and some leading events in 
Passion-Week, it contains information wholly new, which 
is not to he found in any of the three earlier Gospels. 
This gradation of character, in fulfilling the double object 
of confirming earlier testimonies, and of giving further in¬ 
formation, is a secret hut powerful evidence of the deep 
wisdom which molded the separate narratives, so as to ful¬ 
fill most effectually the end for which they were given, 

The silence of the Gospels with regard to our Lord’s 
infancy, and the interval before his ministry began, is 
another mark of that secret wisdom of the Holy Spirit 
which controlled the Evangelists. Apocryphal writings 
have many legends of this obscure period; but the Gospels 
themselves pass it over in reverent and expressive silence. 
They seem thus to echo the words of that prophecy, which 
Isaiah had given concerning our blessed Lord—“ He shall 
not strive, nor cry, nor lift up his voice in the streets.” A 
lesson of quietness, humility, and reverence, most alien 
from the tone of religious forgeries, is hereby inwrought 
into the whole texture of the sacred history. 

The harmony and apparent discrepancies of the Gospels 
are another proof, when rightly viewed, of their common 
inspiration. Two things are plainly required, in order that 
they might fulfill in the highest degree the great object for 
which a Divine revelation is made. There must be, on the 
one hand, such a substantial and manifest unity, as to give 
them the force of concurrent evidence. On the other hand, 
there needed such a measure of distinctness in each testi¬ 
mony, ^as to clear their general consent from all suspicion 
of being artificial and collusive. 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 395 

Now, the four Gospels satisfy this double condition in a 
singular manner. The history of criticism, and of the 
theories of their origin, which have divided the opinions of 
the most learned and diligent students, is alone a sufficient 
proof of the fact. One large class of critics, induced by 
the features of close resemblance, have labored to complete 
a theory of the formation of the first three Gospels from a 
mechanical combination of six or seven earlier documents. 
Others, again, from the multiplied diversities between them, 
have strongly maintained a view diametrically opposite, 
that they grew, quite independently, out of oral tradition, 
and that no one Evangelist had seen the work of any 
other. The zealous maintenance, by many learned writers, 
of both of these opposite views, is a clear sign that the 
Gospels combine, in the fullest measure, the marks of a 
plural and of a concurrent testimony. Had they differed 
more widely, they would have failed to confirm each other’s 
evidence, and their authority would have been weakened 
and destroyed by-the presence of undeniable contradictions. 
Had their agreement been more complete, and free from 
all divergence, they would have lost their character of a 
fourfold testimony, and have failed to satisfy one main 
purpose for which the history was conveyed to the Church 
in this peculiar form. 

Again, the unity of the whole Bible history may be seen 
in the frequent allusions made in the Gospels to the facts 
of the Old Testament. Among those which are referred 
to, and incidentally confirmed by their testimony, are the 
creation of Adam and Eve—Matt, xix, 4—the first institu¬ 
tion of the Sabbath, the ordinance of marriage, the guilt 
and crime of the first tempter, the murder of Abel, the 
wickedness in the days of Noah, the Flood, the law of 
retribution for murder, after the Flood; the genealogy of 
the patriarch, the destruction of Sodom, the history of 


396 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


Lot’s wife, the covenant of circumcision, the expulsion of 
Ishmael, the oath of God to Abraham, the vision of Jacob, 
his purchase of ground at Shechem, the birth of Pharez 
and Zarah, all within the Book of Genesis. In Exodus, 
the words to Moses at the bush, the appointment of the 
Passover, the gift of manna from heaven, the Divine com¬ 
munication of the Law by Moses, the ordinance of cleans¬ 
ing for the leper, the sacrifices in the tabernacle on the 
Sabbath day, are all the object of direct mention, or plain 
allusion. We have also two genealogies, one of which 
reaches back to Abraham, and the other even to Adam, 
and nearly a hundred distinct quotations from the Old 
Testament. 

But while the Gospels are thus linked, retrospectively, 
with all the earlier histories, they are united in the closest 
manner with the later narrative in the Book of Acts, and 
with the Apostolic Epistles, and the Book of Bevelation. 
St. Matthew is especially the means of securing an intimate 
relation between the. Old and the New Testament. St. 
Mark unites together St. Matthew and St. Luke; since the 
incidents, with three slight exceptions, are entirely those 
of St. Matthew, and the order, with hardly an exception, 
the same as in St. Luke. The third Gospel, again, is con¬ 
tinued by St. Luke himself in the Book of Acts, and thus 
forms a link with the later history; while St. John’s Gos¬ 
pel unites the Evangelical history with the Epistles and 
the Prophecies, because three epistles, and the only pro¬ 
phetical book of the New Testament, like the Gospel itself, 
have the beloved disciple for their common author. 

Besides these more technical characters of the Gospels, 
in which they may be seen clearly to carry on one great, 
consistent scheme of sacred history, there are others of a 
still deeper kind, which never fail to impress the humble 
and reverent reader. There is a calmness and quietness of 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 397 

tone, a transparent, unadorned simplicity, which makes us 
forget .the writer in the contemplation of the glorious ob¬ 
ject he sets before us. Like Moses and Elias on the 
mount of Transfiguration, the Evangelists themselves disap¬ 
pear from view, and are lost,/that Jesus their Lord may be 
seen alone. No where can we see more plainly the force of 
those words, which belong to all the inspired messages of 
God, that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of proph¬ 
ecy.” Every chapter and every verse converges here on 
one great object, and seems to repeat the words of the 
Baptist to his disciples: “ Behold the Lamb of God, who 
taketh away the sin of the world !” 

IX. The Book of Acts, the last of the four main divi¬ 
sions of sacred history, and by far the shortest in extent, 
retains the same character, and exhibits no less clearly the 
historical unity which pervades the whole. 

And first, the book has a remarkable unity in its general 
outline, from its beginning to its close. Its subject is the 
planting of the Gospel in the heathen world. It opens, 
accordingly, with the promise of Christ to his apostles— 
“ Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in 
all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of 
the earth.” And it closes with the most definite point in 
the completion of this great work, when the apostle of the 
Gentiles arrived at Borne, the metropolis of heathenism, and 
after summoning the Jews to a conference, denounced their 
national unbelief, and announced the transfer of the re¬ 
jected blessing to the heathen—“Be it known, therefore, 
unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gen¬ 
tiles, and that they will hear it.” Every part concurs in 
describing the steps by which this great change was ful¬ 
filled. We see the Gospel spreading, first, from the He¬ 
brews to the Hellenists at Jerusalem; then, on the murder 
df Stephen, from Judea to Samaria, and the first step taken 


898 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


toward a national conversion from heathenism by the bap¬ 
tism of the Ethiopian eunuch. Then follows the conversion 
of Saul, the destined apostle of the Gentiles, and that of Cor¬ 
nelius of Cesarea, the first Gentile Roman convert, in whose 
case the partition wall began to be broken down. There is 
mention of the reverent submission of the Jewish believers 
to this unexpected change, and the formation of the first 
Gentile Church at Antioch. After the murder of the apostle 
James by the Jews, there follows at once the first missionary 
journey of Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Asia Minor. 
And then, after their return, and the decree of the council, 
affirming the freedom of Gentile believers from the Law of 
Moses, the transition is complete. The Church of the 
Jews, and the other apostles, pass entirely out of sight. 
We have the regular course of St. Paul’s ministry, in Asia, 
in Macedonia, and Achaia, and at Ephesus; till the perse¬ 
cuting malice of the Jews completes the work his zeal had 
begun, and transfers him, a prisoner for the Gentiles, from 
Jerusalem and Cesarea to the imperial city, which was 
to form the center of the Church’s history, for good and 
for evil, through the whole course of the Gentile dispen¬ 
sation. 

The book is called familiarly the Acts of the Apostles. 
But the mention of the apostles is kept subordinate in 
every part to the one design of the whole. After the list 
in the first chapter, no mention occurs, in its whole course, 
of any other among the Twelve than Peter, John, and the 
elder and younger James. The foremost of them, St. Pe¬ 
ter, disappears silently from view after his miraculous rescue 
from the malice of Herod. No light whatever is thrown 
upon his later journeys and labors; and the last sentence 
concerning his travels and labors is merely this: “ He de¬ 
parted, and went to another place.” He appears again in 
the council of Jerusalem; but after its decision, a vail is 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 


899 


drawn over his labors, and those of the other eleven; and 
St. Paul alone, the apostle of the Gentiles, becomes the 
subject of the whole narrative. This marked exclusion of 
events which were not essential to the main object, is a 
proof of the Divine wisdom which controlled the sacred 
penman in the composition of the work, and rendered it, 
by its simplicity, condensation, and unity, a worthy com¬ 
pletion of the long series of inspired history. 

But this unity of design is no less perceptible in the 
connection between this book and the rest of the New and 
the Old Testaments. And here we may notice, first, its sub¬ 
ordination to the Gospels. We have four distinct narratives 
of the life and death of our Lord, but one only, little more 
than one-fourth of their combined length, to record the 
later history of the Church for more than thirty years. 
The three years of our Lord’s ministry occupy more than 
three times the space, in the New Testament narrative, of 
the thirty years which follow. For Christ himself, his life, 
death, and resurrection, are the great sum of the whole 
Gospel message, and the history of the Church is kept in 
strict and beautiful subordination to the history of the 
heavenly Bridegroom. 

Again, the book divides naturally into two main portions 
of nearly equal length, the second of which begins with 
the first council at Jerusalem. The first of these abounds 
in references to the earlier portions of Scripture. In the 
first four chapters alone, there are eight or ten quotations 
from the Old Testament, or allusions to its statements, in 
direct confirmation of their truth. The words of two 
Psalms are declared to be the words of the Holy Ghost. 
The ordinance of the first-fruits, on the day of Pentecost, 
receives its figurative fulfillment; and the confusion of 
tongues at Babel finds its New Testament contrast and 
Divine antidote in the gift of tongues at Jerusalem. Four 


400 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


different prophecies are quoted in the first sermon of St. 
Peter, and declared to be then receiving their fulfillment. 
His next discourse appeals generally to “ all the prophets, 
which have been since the world began,” and again to the 
words of Samuel and the later prophets; but more dis¬ 
tinctly to the covenant with Abraham after the sacrifice of 
Isaac, and to the prediction of Moses in Deuteronomy, 
shortly before his death. In the next chapter we have a 
quotation from Psalm cxviii, an allusion to the first record 
of Creation, and a further quotation from the second Psalm. 
Besides these, two distinct summaries of the Old Testament 
are embodied in the narrative, the first in the apology of 
St. Stephen at Jerusalem, and the second in St. Paul’s dis¬ 
course at Antioch in Pisidia. The truth of the Old Testa¬ 
ment is the common basis on which the first martyr, full 
of the Holy Spirit, and the greatest of the apostles, equally 
rest their appeal, when contending earnestly for the truth 
of the Gospel. Thus the Book of Acts, by the whole char¬ 
acter of its earlier history, is dovetailed inseparably with 
all the previous histories in the Word of God. 

The second or later division has an entirely different 
character. Only two quotations from the Old Testament 
are found in it; one of them from Amos, quoted by St. 
James in the council at Jerusalem, and the other from 
Isaiah, quoted by St. Paul to the Jews at Borne, like a 
mournful key-note at the close of the sacred history. But 
on the other hand, the points of comparison with general 
and classical history are here greatly multiplied ; and the 
coincidences with the historical allusions in the writings of 
St. Paul are so abundant, as to form a most convincing and 
irresistible proof of the genuineness of the epistles, and the 
truth and fidelity of the sacred narrative. These chapters 
form thus the outmost boughs, of the inspired history, and 
bear upon them most abundantly the golden fruitage of 


THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 401 


heavenly truth, unfolded in the didactic and doctrinal por¬ 
tions of the New Testament. 

These facts point clearly to one conclusion. This con¬ 
nected series of history, with one single break, constructed 
on one uniform plan, and almost on the same scale, from the 
Creation onward through four thousand years; confirmed 
by all foreign evidence in its later portions, where alone 
heathen records yield any clear light, and self-sustained in 
all the rest by its own truthfulness and transparent sim¬ 
plicity of style; expanding itself in that generation when 
the Law was given, and in a less degree when the forefather 
and type of Messiah came to the throne, and most of all, 
during the three years of our Lord’s ministry; but in all 
the Other parts moving calmly, swiftly along, indulging in 
no comments, recording the minutest details and the most 
startling wonders in the same tone of simple dignity and 
unadorned plainness of speech, and interwoven, from first 
to last, with innumerable mutual references, is a fact 
wholly unique in the literature of mankind. The Bible, in 
its historical unity, stands alone, and without a rival. One 
Mind may be clearly seen in its whole course, by whose 
wisdom its various writers were guided and controlled, so 
as to furnish, at the long interval of fifteen hundred years, 
a simple and connected outline of the moral government of 
the world—a scheme of mercy which began in Paradise, 
but first blossomed out, and began to yield more abundant 
fruit in the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, the 
Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, and the spread of the Gospel 
throughout the moral wildernesses of the heathen world. 

34 


402 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 

The doctrinal, even still more than the historical unity 
of the Bible, bears evidence to its inspiration and Divine 
authorship. Thirty-nine books in the Old Testament, and 
twenty-seven in the New, the work of forty different writ¬ 
ers, are here collected into one volume, though their first 
composition is spread over the long interval of fifteen 
hundred years. They were all composed in times of 
heathen darkness, when the most civilized peoples and 
mightiest empires of the world were bowing down to stocks 
and stones, or offering polluted worship to “ gods many, 
and lords many,” the impersonations of passion, strife, jeal¬ 
ousy, and every impure and hateful lust. The language, 
the style, the character, the special object, no less than the 
date of these books, are all widely different. But the 
great outlines of truth are every-where the same. There 
is development, but no discrepancy. There are partial con¬ 
trasts, adding life to the whole by the diversity of the 
parts, but no contradiction. A manifest and' undeniable 
harmony of thought, tone, and doctrine, animates' and per¬ 
vades the whole. The view of man is every-where the 
same; that he is the creature of the living God, account¬ 
able to his Maker; fallen, but not hopeless, guilty, but 
not left in despair; the subject of a present curse, but still 
within reach of the richest blessing; corrupt and impure, 
but capable of restoration to the Divine favor and image; 
placed under a penal sentence of death, but capable of 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 


403 


attaining a blessed immortality. The doctrine concerning 
God is every-where the same; that he is one, and there is 
no other than he; that all the gods of the heathen are 
idols, but the Lord made the heavens; that he is almighty, 
all-wise, good, perfect, holy, merciful, everlasting, the 
Maker of all things, and the Judge of all men; a pure, in¬ 
visible Spirit, who must be worshiped in spirit and in 
truth. The revealed way of salvation is every-where the 
same, by faith in God, and in the promise of a great and 
powerful .Redeemer, atonement by sacrifice, and the substi¬ 
tution of the guiltless for the guilty, forgiveness procured 
by the shedding of blood, and inward renewal of heart, the 
fruit of that forgiveness, by which the soul is renewed 
after the image of God, in righteousness, holiness, and 
truth. The practical lessons of duty are also the same in 
every part, faith in the promises of God’s mercy through 
an atoning Savior, working by love—the love of God 
supremely, and the love of all mankind. 

It would require a large volume to unfold thoroughly 
this unity of the Bible, from Genesis, through the Psalms, 
the Prophets, the Gospels, and Epistles, to the Apocalypse, 
in all the main doctrines of the Christian faith. It is only 
by means of a diligent and prolonged study of the Scrip¬ 
tures, that the full impression of this deep and real har¬ 
mony can be received into the mind. I shall merely en 
deavor to show, by the selection of a few passages, how 
each main doctrine runs, like a golden woof, through the 
whole series of these Divine messages; and then illustrate 
the real harmony, amid partial contrast, or fancied contra¬ 
diction, between the teaching of the Old and the New 
Testament. 

I. The doctrinal harmony of the Bible, from first to 
last, may be traced clearly in its explicit statements on all 
the main topics of religious faith. 


404 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


1. The first revealed truth is the fact of creation, or 
that all things were'formed by the will and power of one 
true and living God. The Bible opens its message with 
these words: “ In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth.” This great truth had been entirely lost 
from view in the reign of polytheism and fable; and chaos, 
night, and Erebus, replaced the conception of the creative 
will of the Almighty. It is equally lost in the specula¬ 
tions of a pantheistic philosophy, of which there are too 
many specimens in modern times. But the testimony of 
the Scriptures to this great truth is consistent, uniform, 
and unvaried, from first to last. 

First, when the judgment of the Flood was sent upon 
the world, it is announced in these words—“ I will destroy 
man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both 
man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of 
the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” 
And again—“In the image of God made he man.” 

In the first mission of Moses, the truth is indirectly 
taught, in the Divine expostulation: “ Who hath made 
man’s mouth, or who maketh the dumb or deaf, or the 
seeing or the blind? have not I the Lord?” 

When the Law was given on Mount Sinai, this doctrine 
was publicly embodied in the fourth commandment: “ For 
in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and 
all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore 
the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” The 
statement is repeated in Exodus xxxi: “ For in six days 
the Lord made heaven and earth;” and again in Deuter¬ 
onomy, in two or three varied forms. It is found in 
twenty different Psalms, gives its tone to the Book of Job, 
and runs through all the Proverbs. It appears, in the 
most various associations, in the prophecies of Isaiah. “At 
that day shall a man look to "his Maker,” xvii, 7. “ Ye 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 405 

have not looked unto the Maker thereof, nor had respect 
unto him that fashioned it long ago, ” xxii, 11. “Shall 
the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or 
shall the thing formed say of him that formed it, He had 
no understanding?” xxix, 16. “Lift up your eyes on 
high, and behold who hath created these things, that 
bringeth out their host by number?” “The everlasting 
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, 
fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his 
understanding.” Isa. xl, 28. “ Thus saith God the Lord, 

he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he 
that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of 
it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and 
spirit to them that walk thereon,” xlii, 5. The voice of 
Jeremiah is the same in his earnest prayer: “Ah, Lord 
God, thou hast made heaven and earth by thy great power 
and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for 
thee !” And that of Zechariah : “ The burden of the Word 
of the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth 
the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man 
within him.” 

The same great doctrine runs through the New Testa¬ 
ment. We find it in the opening of the fourth Gospel, 
applied to the Word, the only-begotten Son of the Father: 
“ All things were made by him, and without him was not 
any thing made that was made.” It appears in our Lord’s 
thanksgiving, in the first and third Gospels: “ I thank 
thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth!” and in his 
reply to the Pharisees: “ Have ye not read that he which 
made them in the beginning, made them male and female?” 
In the Book of Acts it appears in every part. In the 
thanksgiving and prayer of the early Church : “ Lord, thou 
art God, which hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, 
and all that in them is,” iv, 24. In the words of the 


406 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


apostles at Lystra: “Sirs, why do ye such things? We 
are men of like passions with you, and preach that ye 
should turn from these vanities unto the living God, who 
made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things there¬ 
in,” xiv, 15. And again, in St. Paul’s discourse at Athens: 
“ God that made the world and all things therein, seeing 
he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples 
made with hands.” And, not to multiply quotations from 
the Epistles, it meets us repeatedly in the closing book of 
the canon, in the song of the heavenly elders, in the oath 
of the mighty Angel, and in the proclamation of the ever¬ 
lasting Gospel by another angel to the idolaters of the last 
days: “ Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of 
his judgment is come, and worship him which made the 
heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the fountains of 
water.” 

2. The unity of God is another doctrine which stands 
out in full relief in every part of the Bible. In the earlier 
hooks it is doubly conspicuous when we contrast the Word 
of God with the monuments and remains of Egypt, and the 
wild and dark fancies of polytheism throughout the ancient 
world. “ I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other 
gods but me.” “ Thou shalt worship no other god, for 
Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” “ XJnto 
thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord 
he is God, there is none else beside him.” “Hear, 0 Israel, 
the Lord our God is one Lord.” 

The same truth runs through the Psalms and the Proph¬ 
ets, and forms a prominent character of their teaching. 
“ All the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made 
the heavens.” “ Confounded be all they that serve graven 
images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye 
gods.” “ I am the Lord ; that is my name ; and my glory 
will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OP THE BIBLE. 40T 

images.” “ Before me there was no god formed, neither 
shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and be¬ 
side me there is no Savior.” “Is there a god beside me? 
Yea, there is no god, I know not any.” “ The Lord is the 
true God, he is the living God and an everlasting King: at 
his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not 
be able to abide his indignation. Thus shall ye say unto 
them, The gods that have not made the heavens and earth 
shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.” 

In the New Testament, while the doctrine of three Per¬ 
sons in the Godhead is taught, the Divine unity, in con¬ 
trast to the many gods of heathenism, is maintained with 
equal clearness. So the apostle writes to the Corinthians: 
“ For though there be that are called gods, whether in 
heaven or in earth, as there be gods many, and lords many, 
yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are 
all things, and we in him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by 
whom are all things, and we by him.” And again, to 
Timothy: “ For there is one God, and one Mediator between 
God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” 

3. The fall and corruption of man is another truth which 
meets us equally in every part of Scripture. It is seen in 
the account of the world before the Flood. “ And God saw 
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that 
every imagination of man’s heart was only evil, and that 
continually.” It reappears in the blessing after the Flood: 
“ I will not curse the ground any more for man’s sake, for 
the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his vyouth.” 
We read it, further, in the growth of idolatry after the 
Flood, in the guilt of the Cities of the Plain, and their de¬ 
struction, and the sentence pronounced upon the Amorites— 
Gen. xv—with the reason assigned for delaying the judg¬ 
ment. The history of the Exodus is one ceaseless illustra¬ 
tion of its truth. Moses sums up his review of the conduct 


408 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


of Israel in the words: “ Ye have been rebellions against 
the Lord since the day that I knew you.” David makes 
the penitent confession: “ Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, 
and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Ezra exclaims in 
the same spirit: “ 0 my God, I am ashamed and blush to 
lift up my face to thee, my God; for our iniquities are in¬ 
creased over our heads, and our trespass is grown up to the 
heavens.” The last prophecy of the Old Testament is one 
ceaseless expostulation with the sin and stubbornness of the 
chosen people. The Gospels open with the warning of the 
Baptist: 0 generation of vipers, who hath warned you to 

flee from the wrath to come?” and toward their close they 
reecho the description in those solemn words of the Savior: 
“ Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape 
the damnation of hell?” The opening chapters of the 
Epistle to the Bomans are full of the same truth. The 
apostle quotes evidence to confirm it from six different 
Psalms, and from Isaiah’s prophecies, and then draws the 
universal inference—“ Now we know that whatsoever the 
law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that 
every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become 
guilty before God.” 

4. The doctrine of a Bedeemer, by whom deliverance 
from the curse of sin would be given to men, is another 
truth, which runs through the whole of Scripture. “ The 
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.*’ It meets us 
in the first account of the Fall, where the Seed of the 
Woman is announced, who should bruise the head of the 
serpent. It reappears in the promise to Abraham of that 
Seed, who should possess the gate of his enemies, and in 
whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. It is 
announced by the dying Jacob, in the words—“ The scepter 
shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from be¬ 
tween his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him shall the 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 


409 


gathering of the people he.” It is implied in the types of 
Isaac’s sacrifice, and of Joseph’s exile, sufferings, and ex¬ 
altation. It is seen in the promise of the prophet like unto 
Moses, and iu the types of the paschal lamb, the smitten 
rock, from which there flowed living water, the scapegoat, 
and the brazen serpent. It meets us in the Psalms and 
Prophets with growing clearness; and the titles, the King, 
Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the Man of Sorrows, the 
Branch, Messiah the Prince, the Son of Man, the King of 
Zion, the Shepherd, Jehovah’s Fellow, the Messenger of 
the Covenant, the Sun of Righteousness, reveal the various 
attributes of grace and holiness, which were to be mani¬ 
fested in the person and work of the Incarnate Son of God. 

5. The way of salvation by faith is another doctrine in 
which all the sacred writers conspire with a striking unity. 
“ By faith Abel offered unto God a more acceptable sacri¬ 
fice than Cain.” Heb. xi, 3. Abraham “ believed God, 
and it was counted to him for righteousness.” Gen. xv, 6. 
This fundamental doctrine, though specially unfolded by 
St. Paul, runs through all the intermediate books of Scrip¬ 
ture. Trust in God, in the Old Testament, and faith in 
Christ, its equivalent in the New, is every-where proclaimed 
to be the pathway of life and salvation. Man fell through 
unbelief, and by faith alone he can he recovered. This 
great truth appears equally in the books of Moses, in the 
later Prophets, and in the Gospels, the writings of St. Paul, 
and the Epistles of St. Peter and St. John. The eleventh 
of Hebrews is a divine commentary on the Old Testament 
histories, in which this aspect of them is brought into full 
relief; and the whole message of the Bible is-summed up 
in the solemn contrast, “ He that believeth on the Son of 
God hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the 
Son shall not see life, hut the wrath of God abideth on 
him.” 


35 


410 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


6. The need of sacrifice and atonement is another truth, 
in -which we may trace the all-pervading unity of Scripture. 
Abel’s sacrifice was accepted when he brought the firstlings 
of his flock; and Cain’s was rejected, who brought a blood¬ 
less offering;, the fruits of the earth. When Noah had slain 
the victims in sacrifice after the Flood, “ the Lord smelled 
a sweet savor,” and a renewed covenant of mercy and prom¬ 
ise was given. It was in the midst of such sacrifices that 
the covenant was again renewed to Abraham with special 
promises. After the sacrifice of Isaac, in a figure, and of 
the ram caught in the thicket in his stead, a still fuller 
blessing was given by a new covenant, and confirmed with 
the oath of God. The Law of Moses was full of sacrificial 
ordinances, from the Passover on the night of the Exodus 
to the latest ordinance of purification, in Numbers, by the 
spotless heifer that was to be slain, and whose ashes were 
to sprinkle the unclean. Isaiah transfers the types of the 
law to their antitype, the coming Messiah: “ All we, like 
sheep, have gone astray : we have turned every one to his 
own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of 
us all.” “ When thou shalt make his soul an offering; for 
sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days. . . . 
By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, 
for he shall bear their iniquities.” The New Testament 
repeats the same truth in still clearer accents, and refers 
all the types in the legal sacrifices to their great Antitype: 
“ The Son of man came, not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister; and to give his life a ransom for many.” “ Be¬ 
hold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the 
world!” “ Without shedding of blood there is no remis¬ 

sion.” “ God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew 
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God 
in him.” “ These are they which have come out of great 
tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OP THE BIBLE. 411 

white in the blood of the Lamb.” “ Who his own self 
bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being 
dead to sin, might live to righteousness, by whose stripes 
ye are healed.” 

7. The need of regeneration and holiness of heart in 
order to salvation is another truth which runs through the 
whole Bible. The contrast is drawn broadly, throughout, 
between the righteous and unrighteous, the believer and 
the unbeliever, the obedient and the disobedient. In the 
Flood, and the deliverance of Noah; in the destruction of 
Sodom and Gomorrah, the rescue of Lot, the intercession 
of Abraham, and the promise that the city should have 
been spared for the sake of ten righteous; and in the re¬ 
peated contrasts of the Psalms, the Proverbs, and all the 
Prophets, the same doctrine every-where appears. “ The 
Lord loveth the righteous, but the wicked, and him that 
loveth violence, his soul hateth.” “ The Lord preserveth 
all them that love him, but all the wicked will he destroy.” 
“ The Lord taketh pleasure in his people; he will beautify 
the meek with salvation.” The prayers of the Psalmist 
teach the same lesson: “ Create in me a clean heart, 0 God; 
and renew a right spirit within me.” The Old Testament 
closes with a strong assertion of this moral contrast, and 
the opposite issue to which it leads: “ Then shall ye re¬ 
turn, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, 
between him that serveth God, and him that serveth him 
not.” 

The same contrast is revealed with equal clearness in the 
New Testament, and is there ascribed more plainly to its 
secret cause, the work of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of 
men. “A good tree,” our Lord tells his disciples, “can 
not bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring 
forth good fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs 
of thistles?” Again, to Nicodemus: “That which is born 


412 TIIE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is 
spirit.” “ Except a man be born again, he can not see the 
kingdom of God.” The apostles dwell much on the same 
truth: “ They that are in the flesh can not please God.” 
“ To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually 
minded is life and peace.” “ If any man be in Christ, he 
is a new creature; old things are passed away: behold, all 
things are become new.” “ For if ye live after the flesh, 
ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the 
deeds of the body, ye shall live.” “ Follow after holiness, 
without which no man shall see the Lord.” “Faith with¬ 
out works is dead, being alone.” “ As he which hath 
called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conver¬ 
sation : because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy.” 
“ He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is 
righteous; he that committeth sin is of the devil.” “Here 
is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the 
commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” All these, 
and many similar passages, teach the same lesson. They 
separate all mankind, morally and spiritually, into two op¬ 
posite classes, believers and unbelievers; those who live 
after the flesh, and after the spirit; those who serve God, 
and those who serve him not; and teach that a well- 
grounded hope of salvation belongs to the former class, 
and to therii alone. Repentance and conversion is the 
bridge by which the soul passes from one side to the other 
of this gulf of moral separation; and the message of our 
Lord is solemn and weighty, and sums up the voice of all 
Scripture : “ Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” 
“ Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

II. This doctrinal unity of the Bible might easily be 
traced in many other particulars, and under every diversi¬ 
fied topic of religious truth. But it may be well to confine 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 413 

our view to one aspect in which it has been controverted 
and denied, from the contrast between the Old and the 
New Testament. If it can be shown that, even where the 
apparent divergence is widest, the real harmony is com¬ 
plete, no further proof will he needed of that Divine 
Authorship which belongs to the whole, and which has 
provided for men, by prophets and apostles, a perfect and 
harmonious treasury of Divine truth. 

The contrast in question has been stated by a modern 
skeptic in these terms: 

“ Here are two forms of religion which differ widely, set 
forth and enforced by miracles; the one ritual and formal, 
the other actual and spiritual; the one the religion of Fear, 
the other of Love; one finite, and resting altogether on the 
special revelation made to Moses, the other absolute, and 
based on the universal revelation of God, who enlightens 
all that come into the world. One offers only an earthly 
recompense, the other makes immortality a motive to a 
Divine life. One compels men, the other invites them. 
One half the Bible refutes the other half; the Gospel an¬ 
nihilates the Law; the Apostles take the place of the 
Prophets, and go higher up. If Christianity and Judaism 
be not the same thing, there must be hostility between the 
Old and the New Testament, for the Jewish form claims to 
be eternal. To an unprejudiced man this hostility is very 
obvious. It may indeed be said, Christianity came not to 
destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them; and 
the answer is plain, their fulfillment was their destruction.” 

The self-confident and irreverent tone of this objection, 
in which the lie is directly given to our blessed Lord’s own 
declaration, does not speak well for the practical power of 
that “ absolute religion ” by which the writer strives to re¬ 
place and supersede historical Christianity. 

And first, this objection, instead of being the result of 


414 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


intellectual progress, is merely a relapse into an error 
which appeared very early, and from which it was one of 
our Lord’s first lessons to deliver his own disciples. The 
difference of tone between his own teaching and that of the 
Law of Moses, or rather of the scribes and Pharisees who 
expounded it to the people, was soon observed, and led 
many hearers to suspect that his purpose was to set aside 
the authority of these earlier messages of God. But our 
Lord asserts the falsehood of this notion in the strongest 
and plainest terms: “ Think not that I am come to destroy 
the Law and the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but 
to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth 
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the 
Law, till all be fulfilled.” 

The objection affirms that the fulfillment of the Law and 
the Prophets, under the Gospel, is their destruction. Our 
Lord affirms the exact reverse,, that the fulfillment of them, 
which it was his object to secure, was the contrast and an¬ 
tithesis of their destruction: “ I am not come to destroy, 
but to fulfill.” It is no slight presumption in this reckless 
advocate of “ absolute religion ” to give the lie direct to the 
Son of God in one of his most solemn and deliberate state¬ 
ments. 

But while the alleged contradiction between the Law and 
the Gospel is thus disproved by the highest authority, that 
of our Lord himself, so that no one can be his true disciple 
who affirms them to be hopelessly at variance, a partial and 
real contrast between them is clearly recognized in the 
New Testament. In the opening of the fourth Gospel we 
find it distinctly announced. “ For the Law was given by 
Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” So 
again, after the Baptist’s message—“The Law and the 
Prophets were until John; since then the kingdom of 
heaven is preached, and every one is pressed into it.” The 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF TIIE BIBLE. 


415 


Epistles of St. Paul have this for their main subject. “ The 
law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better 
hope did, by which we draw nigh to God.” “ Therefore 
by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified, for by 
the law is the knowledge of sin.” “ Before faith came, we 
were kept under the law, shut up to the faith that should 
be revealed.” “ For if they which -are of the law be heirs, 
faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect. Be¬ 
cause the law worketh wrath; for where there is no law, 
there is no transgression.” “ For if the ministration of 
death, written and engraven on stones, was glorious, how 
shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious?” 
In these and many other passages a strong contrast is 
plainly allowed and affirmed between the earlier messages 
of the Law, with their holiness and severity, and the grace, 
tenderness, and freedom of the Gospel of Christ. 

The contrast, then, between the Law and the Gospel is 
no modern discovery of unbelievers. So far as it is real, it 
is recognized fully and openly in the New Testament, and 
forms the basis of sotne of its most earnest appeals to the 
hearts and consciences of Christian men. On the other 
hand, the falsehood which exaggerates this partial contrast 
into a total contradiction is detected by our Lord, when it 
first began to arise in the hearts of his own disciples, and 
receives his earnest and indignant reprobation. He who 
maintains it must first claim to be wiser than Christ him¬ 
self, and thereby forfeits at once the name and character 
of a Christian. 

But let us examine the statement more closely. And 
first, is the religion of Moses and of the Old Testament 
ritual and formal only? Let Moses himself answer, in his 
earnest appeal before his death: “ And now, Israel, what 
doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the 
Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, 


416 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul. . . . Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye 
were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear 
the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him 
thou shalt cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy 
praise, and he is thy God.” And our Lord himself, who 
alone, of all mankind, ever fulfilled the Law of Moses, as¬ 
sures us that its weightiest matters were not the tithe of 
mint, anise, and cummin, but lessons of a far higher kind, 
even “judgment, mercy, and faith.” 

Again, is the teaching of the Law a religion of fear 
alone? Is it finite, making no appeal to the unchangeable 
moral attributes of the Most High? Every religion must 
take its impress from the character of the object of worship. 
Cruel gods must create a fierce and cruel religion, and licen¬ 
tious divinities one of impurity and sensual lust. 

Now, one part of the Law is plainly designed to reveal 
the true character of the God of Israel, in contrast to the 
superficial and hasty impressions which might be formed 
from a less thoughtful observation. When Moses offered 
the prayer in a time of distress and fear, “ I beseech thee, 
shew me thy glory,” the answer was given—“I will cause 
all my goodness to pass before thee, and I will proclaim 
the name of the Lord before thee.” After special prepara¬ 
tion, and with peculiar solemnity, the desired revelation 
was given. “ And the Lord passed by and proclaimed, The 
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, 
and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for 
thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, 
and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the 
iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon chil¬ 
dren’s children, unto the third and fourth generation.” 

What was the effect of this message, this crowning rev¬ 
elation of the “ religion of fear ” upon him who received 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 


417 


it? “And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward 
the earth, and worshiped, and said, If now I have found 
grace in thy sight, 0 Lord, let my Lord, I beseech thee, 
go among us, for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our 
iniquity and sin, and take us for thine inheritance.” Nor 
was this a transient impression on the mind of Moses alone. 
The Psalmist, four hundred years later, learned from the 
same passage a religion of hope and love: “ He made 
known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children 
of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to 
anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, 
neither will he keep his anger forever. For as the heaven 
is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them 
that fear him.” 

Hoes the Law, again, offer only an earthly recompense? 
Its fundamental promise is in the words to Abraham, “ I will 
bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a 
blessing.” “ Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield, and thy 
exceeding great reward.” “ I will be a God unto thee, and to 
thy seed after thee.” Since God himself is “ the everlasting 
God,” these promises clearly partake of the same character. 
The patriarchs desired “a better and a heavenly country.” 
God was not “ ashamed to be called their God, for he had 
prepared for them a city.” In the hope of a better por¬ 
tion, they “ confessed themselves strangers and pilgrims on 
the earth.” The dying J$cob exclaimed, “I have waited 
for thy salvation, 0 Lord.” Moses “had respect unto the 
recompense of reward,” and therefore made mention of a 
book of life, in which his name was written. The Divine 
law enjoined the Israelites : “ The land shall not be sold for¬ 
ever; for the land is mine, and ye are strangers and so¬ 
journers with me.” The commandment set before them 
“ life and good,” and promised, on their obedience, that the 
everlasting God would be “their life, and the length of 


418 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


their days.” The eternal God was to be their refuge, and 
underneath them were to he his “ everlasting arms.” They 
were to dwell in safety, as a people saved by the Lord; and 
their days to be multiplied as the days of heaven. To the 
Levites the further promise was given, when excluded from 
a distinct territory, that “ the Lord God of Israel was their 
inheritance.” In all these promises there was a direct ref¬ 
erence to God himself, as their God by especial covenant; 
and to those who read them with faith they would be 
a sure pledge, not merely of temporal, but of eternal 
blessings. 

Again, does the Law merely compel by force, and not 
invite by the power of moral suasion? No statement could 
be more opposed to the truth. The whole Book of Deuter¬ 
onomy is one continued, earnest appeal to the conscience, 
the feelings, and the heart of the people of Israel. It is 
perhaps the longest, the most sustained moral invitation to 
be found in the compass of the Word of God. The voice 
also of the prophets is a perpetual expostulation, a series 
of earnest appeals to the conscience and heart of later gen¬ 
erations. 

Has the Gospel, on the other hand, no solemn messages, 
no appeals to fear, to temper the grace and tenderness of 
its invitations? Far from it; the warnings it contains are 
more severe than those of the Law itself, borrow from them 
their sharpest accents of rebuke, and infuse into them a 
tone of still deeper meaning. “ I will forewarn you whom 
ye shall fear: fear him, which after he hath killed hath 
power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him.” 
“ Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape 
the damnation of hell?” “If the word spoken by angels 
was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience re¬ 
ceived a just recompense of. reward, how shall we escape, 
if we neglect so great salvation?” “Of how much sorer 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 419 

punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden 
under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the 
covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and 
done despite to the Spirit of grace ?” “ It is a fearful 

thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” “ For 
even our God is a consuming fire.” In the face of these 
and similar passages, it is indeed strange how the most su¬ 
perficial could venture to set up the imaginary contrast, 
that the Gospel is a religion of love only, without fear, and 
the Law one of fear only, without love. In each message 
both of the Divine attributes are distinctly revealed, though 
not in the same proportion. The righteousness and holy 
severity of the Law is tempered by rich revelations of Di¬ 
vine grace; while the fuller and clearer grace of the Gospel 
is guarded by warnings still more solemn than the penal 
sanctions of the elder covenant; and a still sorer punish¬ 
ment is denounced upon those who despise and disobey. 

Again, the promises of the Gospel, while they relate 
mainly to the future, include the present also. It retains 
the lower promises of the Law, and only tempers them, by 
the knowledge of the cross, with a new element of patience 
and mingled sorrow. Our Lord lays down this law of hope 
clearly to his followers: “ There is no man that hath left 
house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, 
or children, or lands, for my sake and the Gospel’s, but he 
shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, with persecu¬ 
tions; and in the world to come, eternal life.” The apos¬ 
tle repeats and confirms his Master’s promise, and declares 
that “godliness is profitable for all things, and hath the 
promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to 
come.” The two dispensations, even where the seeming 
contrast is the greatest, interlace and overlap, like the folds 
of the curtains of the tabernacle, with a marvelous unity; 
and reveal, amidst their partial contrast, the one mind of 


420 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


the Divine Spirit, penetrating, molding, pervading, and har¬ 
monizing the whole. 

But this deep unity between the Law and the Gospel 
may be seen more clearly when we look below the surface, 
and refer them to those Divine attributes which they are 
especially designed to reveal. 

There are three successive forms of Divine goodness, as¬ 
cending by a climax to its fullest and highest exhibition. 
The first is simple bounty, or love to creatures, as creatures, 
irrespective of every moral difference. This is the basis of 
natural religion in its simplest and most elementary form. 
It is implied and assumed in the Bible, and blends with its 
messages; but is like the court of the Gentiles, when com¬ 
pared with the higher lessons of written revelation. The 
second is righteousness and holiness, or the love of moral 
good, and the hatred of moral evil. This is the funda¬ 
mental truth of the legal covenant. It reveals God in his 
holiness, in that hatred of sin, as well as delight in good¬ 
ness, which finds its reflection in the double precept, “ Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” It is this 
character of the Old Testament which makes it wear so 
forbidding and repulsive an aspect to all hearts that are 
still under the power of sin, and have attained no real sym¬ 
pathy with the Divine holiness. It is an aspect of perfect 
goodness, higher than simple, indiscriminate bounty, but 
less excellent than the grace of the Gospel. This is the 
third and highest form of Divine goodness—kindness to the 
unthankful and the unworthy; a love which does not flatter 
or indulge them in their sin, but uses all patience and wis¬ 
dom to raise them from the depth of moral evil into the 
image of God, the recovered possession of purity, upright¬ 
ness, and love. 

There is nothing, then, arbitrary or capricious in this 
mutual relation of the Law of Nature, or the earlier stage 


THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 421 

of unwritten revelation, the Law of Moses, and the Gospel 
of Christ. They are three steps in the same series, an 
outer court, a holy place, and a most holy; and are all re¬ 
quired in a complete and harmonious revelation of the 
Divine goodness to sinful men. The partial contrast be¬ 
tween the Law and the Gospel is just as essential to the 
wisdom of the message as their secret harmony. It is only 
the severity of holiness which can prepare us for a just and 
full apprehension of Divine grace. Remove these prepara¬ 
tory teachings, and grace ceases to be grace. It soon de¬ 
generates into mere indifference to moral good and evil, the 
darkest form of a perverse fatalism, instead of the best and 
noblest form of goodness, tender compassion to the guilty, 
and redeeming love. 

Contrast, however, is not contradiction. It is one ele¬ 
ment in the most complete and perfect unity. The hues 
of light in the rainbow are contrasted with each other, and 
still they are only pure light analyzed and separated into 
its varying elements. And so it is with the truths of the 
Law and the Gospel. In one we have types, in the other 
antitypes. In one holy severity is more apparent, in the 
other tender compassion and grace. But the contrasted 
truths interpenetrate the whole. The Gospel, with its 
richest grace, is virtually contained in the Law; and holi¬ 
ness, in its deepest and most solemn tones of warning, 
blends every-where with the rich harmonies of the Gospel 
promises. The God revealed in the Law is one who 
“ careth for the strangers, and relieveth the fatherless and 
the widowwho “ giveth good to all flesh, because his 
mercy endureth forever.” He is One who promises that 
he will hear the cry of the poor in his distress, “for I am 
gracious;” and commands his people: “Thou slialt not op¬ 
press a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, for 
ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” He is One who 


422 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


forbids every grudge, and enjoins a perfect love; who cares 
for tbe safety of the poor, the deaf, the blind; and teaches 
lessons of kindness even to the child in his play, from the 
lost ox or ass, and the gleanings of the harvest field. On 
the other hand, the Gospel fences round its most gracious 
promises with terrors borrowed from the language of the 
Law, and the prospect of coming judgment. Its most 
gracious invitations follow close upon a warning to unbe¬ 
lievers : “ It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Go¬ 
morrah in the day of judgment than for youand its 
noblest descriptions of the future blessedness are linked 
with the solemn declaration, “ For without are dogs, and 
sorcerers, and whoremongers, and idolaters, and murderers, 
and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.” Righteousness 
in the Law prepares the way for grace; and grace, in the 
Gospel, reigns “ through righteousness unto eternal life.” 
They are attributes of perfect goodness, contrasted, but still 
harmonious; revealed successively, that their true force and 
meaning may be more clearly seen by dull and earthly 
minds, and still blending ever with each other in their par¬ 
tial separation. Mercy is vailed, yet every-where present 
in the Law, but is revealed in the Gospel; and the grace 
of the Gospel, centering in the cross of Christ and his 
Divine atonement, is the highest, noblest, and most won¬ 
derful exhibition of the righteousness of God. Thus 
“ mercy and truth meet together, and righteousness and 
peace embrace each other.” “ Truth springs ” here u out 
of the earth ” in the person of the incarnate Redeemer, and 
“ righteousness looks down from heaven,” while the Spirit, 
the reward of his suffering and agony, is poured out upon 
a sinful world. 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 


423 


CHAPTER XIX. 

REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 

The Bible, if composed of true revelations from God to 
man, reaching through a space of fifteen hundred years, 
may be expected to throw some light on the scheme of 
Divine providence. Its first object may be to promote per¬ 
sonal religion, to reclaim prodigals from their sin, to pro¬ 
vide a firm ground of hope for sincere penitents, and in¬ 
struct them in their present duty to God and their fellow- 
men. But since its professed aim is to renew the souls of 
men in the image of God, it must, in its higher lessons, 
give its disciples some real insight into the plans and pur¬ 
poses of the Most High. For its object is not only to con¬ 
vert rebels and slaves into servants, but to exalt servants 
themselves into the friends and the sons of God. 

The Scriptures satisfy this reasonable expectation. A 
unity of living hope runs through the whole course of their 
messages. The histories, the doctrines, and the prophecies, 
all harmonize with each other; and reveal, under varied 
aspects, one consistent scheme of Divine wisdom, which 
moves on continually toward the redemption of a sinful 
world. 

All skepticism, however unconsciously, has its root in 
the heart. Man must feel and own that he is a sinner, 
before he can feel his need of a Bedeemer. He must own 
his guilt, before he can sue for pardon, or welcome the 
Divine atonement by which pardon is secured. He must 
learn his weakness in the inward conflict with selfishness 


424 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


and sin, before he will rest on a higher strength than his 
own, or seek the promised help of the Spirit of God. So 
long as he thinks that he needs education alone, without 
conversion or renewal of heart, the Gospel of Christ will 
remain to him a sealed mystery. If he attempts, in this 
state of mind, to interpret the scheme of providence, he 
will be almost sure to lose himself in a labyrinth of error. 
God’s providence is not a course of education for a world 
of teachable, happy, sinless disciples of truth. It is a hos¬ 
pital for souls laboring under a sore disease, a scheme of 
redemption for the lost and guilty, procured through the 
dyfhg agony of the Son of God. Whenever this idea of 
redemption is lost, then the key of knowledge is taken 
away, and providence becomes a hopeless enigma. The 
facts of history, and the testimonies of Scripture, have then 
to be' set aside, or garbled and falsified, in order to recon¬ 
cile them with the demands of some false and deceptive 
theory, some philosophical counterfeit of Christianity, from 
which all its distinctive features have passed away. 

That view of providence, which sees in it simply a 
scheme for the world’s education, denies the fall of man, 
and, by consequence, his need of a Divine redemption. It 
diverges, then, from the Bible at the outset, and this 
divergence increases, as we travel along the stream of time. 
The darker features of the world’s history have to be ex¬ 
plained away, in order to reconcile them with a sinless 
progress of humanity from infancy to perfect wisdom. The 
foulest abominations of heathenism, for thousands of years, 
have then to be softened down into the harmless and natu¬ 
ral delusions of infancy, before human reason had ripened 
by the due exercise of its own powers. The later idola¬ 
tries and sensual vices of Greece and Home, and the self- 
righteousness of the Jewish Pharisees, to suit the same 
theory, must be taken for the generous and attractive im- 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 


425 


pulses of opening youth; and the apostasies of the middle 
ages, or the feverish worldliness and intellectual pride of 
later times, must he termed the growth of manly strength, 
or the calm and mature wisdom of ripened and experienced 
age. Thus the testimony of the Bible has to be reversed 
and falsified in every point, both in its historical state¬ 
ments and its prophetical warnings; and the heady and 
high-minded are beguiled with the flattering notion that 
they are wiser than the wisest of former generations, from 
the happy accident of their being born in a later and more 
enlightened age of the world. 

The comparison of the times of the Law to childhood, and 
of the Gospel to a riper age, has a direct warrant in the 
Scriptures themselves. But it belongs to the true disciples 
of the Law and the Gospel alone. When extended to the 
whole world, with its multitude of unbelievers, the com¬ 
parison fails. Where there is no life, there can be no real 
growth. There must be repentance and conversion from 
sin to God, before the true education of the soul can begin. 
Unbelief may revolve in cycles of error from age to age; 
but only those who enter in at the strait gate can walk in 
the way of life, and thus advance nearer and nearer to that 
moral perfection, the recovered image of God, after which 
their souls continually aspire. 

The Bible, alike in its histories and prophecies, is flatly 
opposed to those theories of mankind’s gradual and uni¬ 
versal progress in moral and religious truth, which have 
been propounded by unbelieving philosophy, and which 
sometimes labor, however vainly, to support themselves by 
an appeal to its own statements. The pictures it sets be¬ 
fore us are widely different—a series of rebellions and 
apostasies, resisted, and partially overcome, by mighty acts 
of Divine grace; but continually repeated in new forms, 
till they issue, in the last times, in a solemn and fearful 


426 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


controversy between light and darkness, and in judgment 
on unbounding ungodliness, as well as in rich mercy and 
grace to those who know God and obey the Gospel of 
Christ. We are told, in the New Testament, that “ in the 
last days perilous times shall come,” and that “ evil men 
and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and be¬ 
ing deceived.” And, however the views of Christians may 
vary with regard to the future course of Providence, and 
the final victories of truth, one thing must be plain, to all 
who vead the Scriptures with reverence, that they are 
no - where ascribed to a natural law of human progress, but 
to gracious acts of the Holy Spirit, or direct judgments of 
Christ, which will overcome and reverse the downward 
tendency of the human heart, and bind a reluctant and 
rebellious race, by mercy and judgment, to the footstool of 
the Most High. 

But while the Bible is thus opposed to those spurious 
theories of progress, which are based on human pride, and 
contradict the facts of history, it exhibits a progress of a 
different kind, in the ceaseless unfolding of a scheme of 
Divine mercy for the redemption and recovery of sinful 
man. God, in his own nature, is unsearchable: he can be 
known only as he is revealed. A revelation of moral at¬ 
tributes, since it must consist of the successive acts of God’s 
moral government, must plainly be progressive. Salvation, 
or the recovery of the soul from the power of sin, is by 
faith alone. The object of faith is Divine truth. It is by 
the knowledge of the truth that the souls of men are 
actually redeemed and renewed. And since the providence 
of God unfolds itself, from age to age, in new acts of judg¬ 
ment and of mercy, the materials of moral influence are 
thus increased and multiplied, which the Holy Spirit, the 
Lord and Giver of life, employs in his gracious work upon 
the hearts of men, both in their first conversion and in 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 427 

their later advances in heavenly wisdom. There is thus a 
double progress, which the Scriptures reveal to us. The 
first is that of the Divine counsel itself, or the acts of 
mercy and judgment, which constitute the moral govern¬ 
ment of the world, and the messages of revelation. This is 
unintermitted, ceaseless, and unfailing. It admits of no 
arrest, and no reverse. However dark the moral state of 
the world may be in special crises of Providence, the stars, 
even at midnight, move on in their everlasting courses, and 
prepare the way for a brighter sunrise to follow. The 
second kind of progress is that of the actual fruits of re¬ 
demption in each successive age. And this resembles the 
apparent movements of the planets. There is a general 
progress, subject to temporary retrocession and decline. 
Seasons of Divine forbearance, through man’s perverseness, 
lead to spiritual decay. “ Because sentence against an evil 
work is not executed speedily, the hearts of the sons of 
men is fully set in them to do evil.” That evil is per¬ 
mitted to reach a certain hight, and is then broken to 
pieces by new acts of judgment, followed by fresh and 
higher revelations of mercy. And thus, although by a 
checkered and seemingly-irregular course, the work of 
grace moves on continually, and truth prevails, by a slow 
but sure advance, from age to age. Even when it seems to 
decay, and “ the faithful are minished from the children of 
men ”—the time of fear and sorrow is only the season of 
travail before a joyful birth. Each fresh exhibition of 
the stubbornness and inveteracy of evil illustrates more 
brightly, in the result, the victorious energy of redeeming 
love. 

Let us begin with the Book of Genesis. No sooner has 
man fallen from his original uprightness, and become the 
prey of death, than hope dawns upon him in the first 
promise. The Seed of the Woman, it is revealed, shall 


428 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


bruise tbe bead of the serpent. The message, however dim 
at first, implied clearly a Deliverer to come, by whom the 
miseries of the fall should be repaired, and the power of 
the deceiver be overcome. This same promise runs, like a 
golden thread, through all the later Scriptures. In the 
very first chapter of the New Testament, the miraculous 
birth of the Messiah answers strictly to this his earliest 
title in the Old Testament. The words of our Lord him¬ 
self announce the promised triumph as already begun. “I 
beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven.” “ Now is 
the judgment of this world : now is the prince of this world 
cast out.” The apostle renews the promise to the Chris¬ 
tians of Rome, where Satan’s seat was so long to be estab¬ 
lished : “ The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your 
feet shortly.” And its completion is one main subject of 
the last and crowning prophecy of the Word of God, where 
the old serpent is revealed in vision, first in the hight of 
his power and fiercest malice, and then in his downfall and 
final judgment. 

The history of the world, before the Flood, is one of 
Divine forbearance carried to its extreme limit, till one 
righteous family alone was found on the earth. A darker 
and more gloomy season can hardly be conceived, than that 
which the sacred historian sets before us. “ The earth was 
corrupt and filled with violence,” and u all flesh had cor¬ 
rupted their way upon earth.” Then followed a most 
solemn judgment, and a signal deliverance. Amidst the 
desolation, a new covenant of mercy was sealed with the 
future race of mankind, which implied that no judgment, 
so total, should ever be repeated, and no season of such 
utter darkness settle down again upon our sinful world. 

When idolatry began to prevail once more, after the 
Flood, and threatened to renew the former calamities, a 
new course of redeeming mercy began. One people were 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 


429 


set apart in the person of their forefather, by a series of 
miraculous visions, to be the special depositories of the 
truth of God, till the promised Redeemer should appear. 
The covenant with Abraham marks evidently a new era in 
God’s providence. Special mercy and electing grace were 
to minister to the larger object of a world-wide redemp» 
tion. “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
blessed.” 

This further promise, like the earlier one in Paradise, is 
repeated through the whole course of Scripture to its close. 
It is the ground of the promise made to Moses at the 
bush: “I will bring you into the land, concerning which I 
did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 
and I will give it to you for a heritage: I am the Lord.” 
It occurs continually, as the warrant of faith and hope, in 
the Psalms and the Prophets: “ Thou wilt perform the 
mercy unto Abraham, and the truth unto Jacob, which 
thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.” 
It meets our eyes in the very first verse of the New Testa¬ 
ment : “ The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the 
son of David, the son of Abraham.” It is repeated again 
in the song of Zacharias. After the day of Pentecost, St. 
Peter appeals to it once more: “ Ye are the children of 
the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with 
our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall 
all the families of the earth be blessed. Unto you first, 
God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, 
in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.” 

Before the grace of God, however, could be clearly made 
known to men, there was needed a full revelation of his 
holiness. This was the great office of the old covenant. 
“ By the law is the knowledge of sin j” and the knowledge 
of sin can alone awaken the desire for mercy, or discover 
to men the true meaning of the grace of the Gospel. Dur- 


430 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


ing the times of the Old Testament this revelation became 
fuller and fuller, with every new display of sin and per¬ 
verseness of the chosen people. Truth stood on the de¬ 
fensive amidst the gloomy reign , of heathen idolatry, and 
the state of actual piety was often lamentably low, as in 
the days of Gibeah, or the reign of Ahab; but the mate¬ 
rials were preparing, slowly and patiently, which the Spirit 
of God would employ in all later ages to help forward the 
promised victories of truth and righteousness. Every gen¬ 
eration yielded its fresh contribution to the growing temple 
of revealed truth, till the last of the prophets announced 
the approaching advent of Messiah, and the rising of the 
Sun of Righteousness, with healing in his wings. 

The birth of our Lord, and still more his death and 
resurrection, marked a new and nobler era in the develop¬ 
ment of this scheme of Divine mercy. The whole range of 
earlier prophecy, from the sentence on the serpent in Para¬ 
dise to the parting words of Malachi, began to be fulfilled. 
Three great wants of mankind were supplied—a perfect 
Example, a Divine Atonement for sin, and a living 
Fountain-Head of heavenly grace. In the new dispensa¬ 
tion of the Spirit, after the great sacrifice of the cross was 
complete, grace was to be as conspicuous as righteousness 
had been before; and the message of the Law to one 
favored race alone was replaced by a free proclamation of 
pardon, life, and immortality, through the atoning death 
and resurrection of Christ, to all the nations of the earth. 

The New Testament, however, in proclaiming the sure 
triumphs of the Gospel, and the final establishment of the 
kingdom of God in the age to come, no where announced 
a smooth and easy progress of truth to its full victory. On 
the contrary, it foretold, under the Gospel, conflicts, re¬ 
verses, and apostasy from the faith, like those which formed 
the history of the Old Testament. The earlier record of 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 


431 


the sins of Israel was to supply descriptions for new forms 
of evil within the Church of Christ. Strong and repeated 
cautions are given against the superstitions of the latter 
times, and against the selfishness and open unbelief that 
would prevail in the last days. The sacred history teaches 
how the Law had been perverted into pharisaic self-right¬ 
eousness, when the grace of the Gospel was revealed. The 
prophecies of the New Testament forewarn the Churches 
that the grace of the Gospel, in its turn, would be extens¬ 
ively abused, and turned into a plea for sensuality and un¬ 
belief, before that fuller display of righteous judgment 
which would break in pieces all the power of evil, and in¬ 
troduce a lasting reign of righteousness and peace. 

The Bible reveals, then, a continual progress, in the 
ceaseless unfolding of the Divine attributes through suc¬ 
cessive ages, from the Patriarchs to the Law, from the Law 
to the Prophets, from these to the times of the Gospel, and 
from these again to a glorious triumph and reign of right¬ 
eousness still to come. But while this objective progress is 
without intermission, it is not so with the actual prevalence of 
truth and holiness among mankind. This has its seasons of 
marked revival and progress, and its intervals of apostasy and 
decay. The abuse of earlier messages or degrees of light, 
when it has reached its climax, brings down the judgments 
of God, and these judgments are followed by new displays 
of mercy. All the analogies of Scripture, and its direct 
prophecies, confirm the hope that the next thousand years 
of the world’s history will surpass the times of the Gospel, 
as far as these have surpassed the times of the Law and 
the early Patriarchs. But this hope is quite consistent 
with warnings of wide-spread apostasy from the faith, 
through intellectual pride, and a strong current of unbe¬ 
lieving worldliness in the last days. All theories of prog¬ 
ress, which lead men to rely on their natural powers in 


432 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


dealing with the truth of God, and to look down on the 
Bible as a secondary and uncertain guide, in comparison 
with their own conscience and reason, instead of being the 
heralds of real advance, are ominous precursors of spiritual 
delusion and open apostasy from the faith. Men, without 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are just as liable to deadly 
and fatal error in our times as in any previous age. The 
louder their boasts of intellectual advancement and superior 
intelligence, the more plainly the snares of that great de¬ 
ceiver, who is “ king over all the children of pride,” are 
weaving around their path. It is only by returning to sit, 
with the docility of little children, at the feet of Christ, 
that they can avoid the danger which the prophet has de¬ 
scribed in such vivid terms: “ Give glory to the Lord your 
God, before he cause darkness, and your feet stumble on 
the dark mountains; and while ye look for light he turn it 
into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness.” 

The Bible is a history of redemption, but of a redemp¬ 
tion still incomplete, and of which the full and open tri¬ 
umph is reserved for days to come. Viewed in the light 
of this great truth, a singular unity of prophetic hope runs 
through the whole, and becomes doubly striking when we 
compare its earliest and latest messages. No books of the 
Bible are more contrasted in their general character than 
Genesis and Bevelation. The interval of time which sep¬ 
arates them is more than fifteen hundred years. The first 
is a simple, unadorned history; the second, a series of 
highly-poetical visions. The first is the earliest variety of 
Hebrew prose; the second, in a language then unborn, em¬ 
bodies the main features of Hebrew poetry. The Book of 
Genesis records common events upon earth; the Apocalypse, 
to a great extent, is the description of heavenly wonders. 
One is a preface to the Law, the other a supplement to the 
Gospel. One was written by the adopted son of Pharaoh’s 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 433 

daughter, learned in all the wisdom of Egypt; the other, 
by an unlearned fisherman of despised Galilee. The first 
abounds with innumerable details, names of persons, places, 
and domestic annals of the most minute and various kind; 
while the other scarcely stoops to set its foot upon earth, 
but dwells apart as on a mount of Transfiguration. When 
the former was composed, Israel had scarcely begun to be 
a nation ; but when the exile received his visions in Pat¬ 
inos, their national history was closed for ages, and they 
were already outcasts and wanderers through the earth. 
All things on earth were changed in this long interval— 
Egypt, Canaan, and Babylon; only God and his redeeming 
grace remained unchangeable. Yet the latest book corre¬ 
sponds to the earliest, as the loops and curtains of the tab¬ 
ernacle, or the various parts of the Temple, with multiplied 
harmonies, partly of the most obvious, but in part of the 
most delicate and unobtrusive kind. Creation has its coun¬ 
terpart in the promise, “ Behold, I make all things new.” 
The uncreated light which fills the heavenly city; the suc¬ 
cessive revelation of the beast from the sea, the bea>t from 
the earth, and one like to the Son of man; the Sabbatic rest 
of a thousand years, the river from the throne, watering 
the heavenly paradise; the great river Euphrates, the gold 
and precious stones of the New Jerusalem, the tree of life 
in the paradise of God; the marriage of the Lamb, the 
Second Adam, and the clothing in which the Bride is 
arrayed; the old serpent, the deceiver of the nations, the 
woman and her mystic Seed, and sore travail; the removal 
of the curse, and the angel guards at the open gates of the 
heavenly paradise; the cry of the martyrs from beneath 
the altar of burnt-offering, and the rainbow around the 
throne, are all so many distinct allusions, in this closing 
prophecy, to the earliest chapters of the sacred history. 

The Old Testament here conspires with the New, and the 

37 


434 


THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 


history of the world’s first infancy is seen to be stored with 
lessons of Divine wisdom, which were to be fully unvailed, 
after six or seven thousand years, in the final close of the 
mystery of God. 

The Bible, then, amidst the large variety of its contents, 
which embrace an interval of fifteen centuries in their com¬ 
position, and seven thousand years in the times t£ which 
they refer—in its histories, psalms, proverbs, prophecies, 
and epistles, earthly facts and heavenly revelations—ex¬ 
hibits, from first to last, the clear signs of a Divine unity 
which pervades and animates the whole. Its distinct parts 
are not of separate interpretation. Behind the human au¬ 
thors stood the Divine Spirit, controlling, guiding, and sug¬ 
gesting every part of their different messages. Their words 
“came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men 
of God spake, borne along by the Holy Ghost.” As the 
Jordan flows underground in part of its course, so this 
Divine unity may be obscured from hasty observers by the 
multitude of intervening works of which the whole message 
is composed, by the variety of historical details, the divers¬ 
ity of manner and style, of age and local circumstance, in 
the sixty-six books which constitute the Bible. But its 
sunrise and sunset are equally glorious, and reveal clearly 
the hidden harmony of the whole revelation. It traces the 
course of Providence from that Creation in which our earth 
was prepared for the habitation of men, to the complete 
accomplishment of that new creation in which it will be 
the habitation of righteousness forever. It begins with the 
first bridal of Adam and Eve, the parents of all mankind, 
and closes with the heavenly bridal of the Second Adam, the 
Lord from heaven, and the Church of the Firstborn, in whom 
the great mystery of that ordinance is fulfilled. It begins 
with a vision of the earthly Paradise forfeited by sin, and the 
taste of the forbidden tree of knowledge. It closes with the 


REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 435 

reve ation of a better and heavenly Paradise, where no tree 
of knowledge is seen, but the tree of life alone, and even its 
leaves are lor the healing of.the nations. It beg ns with 
the success of the old serpeDt in deceiving Adam and Eve, 
and ends with the vision of his overthrow by the Seed of 
the Woman, when he can deceive the nations no more, but 
sinks under the righteous judgment of God. It begins 
with man’s exclusion from Paradise by the watching cher¬ 
ubim and the flairJng sword; and ends with the revelation 
of the heavenly Jerusalem, whose gates are open continu¬ 
ally, while an angel at every gate invites the natious of 
the saved to bring their honor and glory into the city of 
God. 

The more closely, then, we examine the Bible, the more 
plainly it will appear to be indeed “ the true sayings of 
God,” the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for¬ 
ever.” In its width, its freedom, and its grandeur, it re¬ 
flects the largeness of God’s universal providence. Like 
that providence, it has its seeming discrepancies, and its 
real perplexities, much to exercise faith, as well as much 
by which it is nourished, parts which mny appear trivial 
and superfluous, and depths which repel the frivolous with 
a sense of impenetrable gloom. Even those who sincerely 
embrace the Gospel may rest satisfied with a dim and im¬ 
perfect measure of knowledge, and thus have their faith in 
it exposed to sore trial, whenever new temptations assail 
the Church of Christ. But in proportion as we search it 
with humble diligence and earnest prayer, fresh harmonies 
of Divine truth, new wonders of Divine grace and love, will 
disclose themselves to our view. One difficulty after anoth¬ 
er will slowly melt away, and resolve itself into a halo of 
heavenly beauty. Sixty generations of the Church have 
studied it unceasingly; but this incorruptible manna neither 
wastes nor corrupts, and they have never exhausted its 


436 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

stores of Divine wisdom. Sixty generations of unbelievers 
have assailed it on every side with winds of false doctrine, 
but it has only rooted itself the more firmly in the hearts 
of Christians, and in the history of the world. And still, 
after all these ages, there are deep mines of truth in it 
which have never been explored, harvests of spiritual food 
still to be reaped by coming generations, and healing medi¬ 
cines for countless evils that are still concealed in the 
depths of future time. The words of the prophet to Ariel 
of old will assuredly be fulfilled, soon or late, in all who 
assail this enduring Word of God: “And the multitude 
of the nations that fight against her and her munition shall 
be even as the dream of a night vision. It shall be as 
when a hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth, but 
he waketh, and his soul is empty; or a thirsty man dream¬ 
eth, and behold he drinketh, but he waketh, and is faint, 
and his soul hath appetite: so shall all the multitude of 
the nations be that fight against Zion.” But those who 
draw near with reverence, and while they meditate, loose 
their shoes from their feet on this holy ground, will equally 
find the promise of the Psalmist fulfilled in their own ex¬ 
perience : “ They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fat¬ 
ness of thy house, and thou wilt make them drink of the 
river of thy pleasures: for with thee is the fountain of life, 
and in thy light we shall see light.” The meteors of false 
philosophy blaze for a moment, and disappear; but the 
written Word of God is an effluence from the Uncreated 
Light, and must endure forever. 


























































































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